PROVOCATION

April 11, 2012

Travesty in Leadership at the Top!
By Morris Clopton

Never before, in the history of our Republic has so few destroyed so much. Today we face the destruction of our beloved Republic by the very ones supposedly elected to protect it. Barrack Obama and the Democratic left are hell bent on raping and pillaging this country damming us to life under a socialist/Marxist dictatorship headed by the leftist of today.

Barrack Obama spreads his spread the wealth propaganda and the uneducated, unintelligent are swallowing the Kool-Aid. When the fact is that, the wealthiest one percent already pays fifteen percent of all taxes paid. Thirty seven percent of the population pays seventy five percent of all taxes paid. Forty eight percent of the population pays zero federal income tax. Barrack Obama purports to tax the rich to reduce the deficit, knowing this will only raise about five billion in additional taxes. If each federal agency reduced, their budget by only one percent the government would raise thirty plus billion and really reduce the deficit.

Please become informed, contact your representative, and your senators. Demand that they act in the behalf of “we the people” not the established government.

April 1, 2011
Why are “We the People” so passive and cowed by a destructive government?
By Morris Clopton

Everyone who listens to radio, watches TV, or reads newsprint online or printed is aware of the destruction of our great Republic that the Obama administration is forcing on us. Yet we set idly by while the democrats run amuck. It is inconceivable that even the parasites among us that voted for Obama are unable to see the rape and pillage that is taking place everyday in politics. Is there no pride anymore? Liberty once given away is extremely difficult if not impossible to regain.
The democratic party can fuel destruction of lives and property and the state run media print the news with glee as indicated below:
Democrat Congressman Michael Capuano (who is considering a run against Republican Senator Scott Brown) whipped up a crowd of union hacks into a frenzy yesterday declaring: “Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary.”
Union thugs are organized in intimidating gangs and delivered to every political gathering that speaks truth, honesty and seeks integrity in our government. Again, the state run media poses no questions, does not seek answers to why the ruling body of our government can commit unlawful acts and not be answerable to the law.
During a pro-union rally at Colorado’s State Capitol yesterday, some alleged SEIU union supporters got into a shouting match with a black Tea Partier. However, the conversation was not just a loud, heated exchange. It got very personal when two union supporters ganged up on the conservative, one of them calling him “uneducated” and another asking him if he has any children “that he claims”:
We continue to allow a miniscule minority of alternate lifestyle individuals dam our nation with their ungodly acts while gaining sanction of our government with no intestinal fortitude. Example:
Eric Holder DOJ no longer defend ban on homosexual marriages
WASHINGTON — In a major policy reversal, the Obama administration said Wednesday that it will no longer defend the constitutionality of a federal law banning recognition of same-sex marriage.
Attorney General Eric Holder said President Obama has concluded that the administration cannot defend the federal law that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman. He noted that the congressional debate during passage of the Defense of Marriage Act “contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships — precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the (Constitution’s) Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against.”
How can a group of billionaires follow their leader George Soros into subjecting our great Republic into the disaster called Obamacare? This group is obviously intelligent enough to acquire their billions through whatever means, but rest assured they are not looking out for the interest of “We the People” they are looking out for themselves. George Soros supposedly instructed Obama on when and how much to offer in the failed stimulus bill. Every intelligent individual can see how well that worked, yet the parasites of our nation continue to fawn after government handouts.

While Obamacare is rightly notorious as a fiscal nightmare, less well known is just how massively it transferred power from Congress to the executive branch. In fact, the full scope of Congress’s abdication is still unknown. What is now known, however, is that deeply buried within Obamacare was a $105 billion slush fund that assures its implementation into the future, no matter what future voters think or want.

This makes then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comment to the Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties about Obamacare, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” made a year ago tomorrow, ironically prescient. Just this past month, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) updated an October 2010 report titled “Appropriations and Fund Transfers in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).” The new report found that, unbeknownst to almost every Member of Congress, Obamacare contains $105 billion in direct implementation spending that bypasses Congress’s normal appropriations process.

The representatives and senators “We the People” elected in November 2010 need to stand up for honesty, integrity, and transparency in our government. Do what we elected them to do stop spending, get rid of all the excessive unnecessary laws hampering our US corporations from increasing employment via producing products with good “ole” USA quality? Repeal taxes that cripple corporations, institute the Fair Tax and move our nation out of the red into the black economically. There are so many common sense ideas that would drastically increase employment, remove our dependency on foreign oil, reduce taxes on the populous and still meet the needs of our government. Get rid of the handouts to non-producing individuals. Yet our elected officials appear to be concerned only with their own well being not the resurrection of our great nation. How can we be so blind as to continue to allow this to take place?

How I wish to provoke, agitate, aggravate you enough that you will rise up and storm the halls of congress with your letters, emails, and telephone calls. Hold your representatives and senators to their responsibility to do what we elected them to do.

If you are young enough, go to work today in your community, city, town, and state gather like minded individuals rise up get elected to school boards, county, city and state offices make solid changes to resurrect our Republic and sustain it.
If you are already involved in politics find out what constitutes are concerned about and make it happen. If you are too old to begin a new profession, become more aware of what is going on in our nation, share with the young lions, sponsor them, encourage them, stay in constant contact with your elected officials at every level and let them know your concerns and what you think of their performance.

May God give us all the wisdom and strength to take every necessary action to resurrect and sustain our weak and feeble nation?

Morris Clopton

ABOUT THE FAIRTAX:

“The FairTax will not be enforceable and evasion will be rampant”

The truth: More than 80% of all tax returns are eliminated under the FairTax–every individual filing. What remains are retail outlets collecting the FairTax. Of these, 80 percent of all retail sales now occur at large retail chains like Wal-Mart. The point is oversight will still reside under the Treasury Department but the government’s responsibility will be over a far smaller “universe” of tax collection points making compliance oversight far less costly and far more effective than the current system which costs $265 billion a year in compliance costs and still comes up $350 billion a year short of what is owed.

Read more information about compliance in the FairTax white paper: FairTax Reduces Complexity, Compliance Costs and Noncompliance.

“The FairTax will not be revenue neutral (i.e. bring in the same revenue as the current system) at 23%”

The truth: The FairTax rate of 23% (when calculated inclusively like income tax rates) has been thoroughly researched to provide all the revenues now collected under both the income tax system and through FICA payroll taxes. Reports otherwise are largely based on the President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform which declared the rate would have to be much higher. What the Panel failed to make clear in an amazingly shameless sleight-of-hand is that they never studied the FairTax legislation as it exists in pending legislation. They ignored $22 million of FairTax research and, instead, quietly devised their own national consumption tax which they loaded with the exemptions and deductions they felt were “politically realistic”. They also failed to calculate the effects of elimination of the FICA tax on annual taxpayer burdens or on the distributional effects of the FairTax across the income spectrum. Upon completion–and after declaring a national consumption tax flawed–they then refused to publish their underlying assumptions.

For more information on this topic, see these research papers.

* Taxing Sales Under the FairTax – What Rate Works?
* A Comparison of the FairTax Base and Rate
* Comparing Average and Marginal Tax Rates under the FairTax and the Current System of Federal Taxation

“The FairTax is not politically viable”

The truth: Great public policy changes do not happen easily. We believe, however, in the promise of the Founding Fathers that this is a nation, “of, by and for the people”. In the last year we have seen more Congressional co-sponsors come on board faster than ever before. We have seen five of eight GOP candidates and one Democratic candidate embrace the FairTax. With increased media coverage, as at least one candidate has made this a central plank of his campaign, more and more Americans have come to understand the powerful benefits the FairTax offers the nation. They are, in turn, joining our growing citizen army and are beginning to communicate their wishes to their elected officials. All of this progress is a consequence of the body politic first learning about and then accepting the FairTax. As our ranks grow such pressure will increase on Members of Congress and at some point, the voice of the people will eclipse the voices of the relatively small number of Washingtonians who profit working the income tax system at great cost to the nation. Enactment of the FairTax will require an activist citizenry and a resurgence of what has been too often forgotten–public policy can and should be driven by the public. All that is required is that we all dare to be fair and remind our elected officials that they work for their constituents–not for the narrow self-interests of the tax writing committee, the lucrative tax lobby business or the academicians who have built careers around the complexity of the tax code.

For more information on this topic, see these research papers:

* Tax Administration and Collection Costs
* A Macroeconomic Analysis of the FairTax Proposal
* An Open Letter to the President, the Congress and the American People
* Fiscal Federalism – The National FairTax and the States

“The FairTax is regressive and shifts the tax burden onto lower and middle income people”

The truth: The FairTax actually eliminates and reimburses all federal taxes for those below the poverty line. This is accomplished through the universal prebate and by eliminating the highly regressive FICA payroll tax. Today, low and moderate income Americans pay far more in FICA taxes than income taxes. Those spending at twice the poverty level pay a FairTax of only 11.5 percent — a rate much lower than the income and payroll tax burden they bear today. Meanwhile, the wealthy pay the 23 percent retail sales tax on their retail purchases.

Under the federal income tax, slow economic growth and recessions have a disproportionately adverse impact on lower-income families. Breadwinners in these families are more likely to lose their jobs, are less likely to have the resources to weather bad economic times, and are more in need of the initial employment opportunities that a dynamic, growing economy provides. Retaining the present tax system makes economic progress needlessly slow and frustrates attempts at upward mobility through hard work and savings, thus harming low-income taxpayers the most.

In contrast, the FairTax dramatically improves economic growth and wage rates for all, but especially for lower-income families and individuals. In addition to receiving the monthly FairTax prebate, these taxpayers are freed from regressive payroll taxes, the federal income tax, and the compliance burdens associated with each. They pay no more business taxes hidden in the price of goods and services, and used goods are tax free.

How can the FairTax generate lower net tax rates for everyone and still pay for the same real government expenditures? The answer is two-fold. Firstly, the tax base is dramatically widened by including consumer spending from the underground economy (estimated at $1.5 trillion annually), and by including illegal immigrants, those who escape their fair share today through loopholes and gimmicks. In addition, 40 million foreign tourists a year will become American taxpayers as consumers here. Secondly, not everyone’s average net tax burden falls. For households whose major economic resource is accumulated wealth, the FairTax will deliver a net tax hike compared to the current system.

Consider, for example, your typical billionaire, of which America now has more than 400. These fortunate few are invested primarily in equities on which they pay taxes at a 15 percent rate, whether their income comes in the form of capital gains or dividends. In addition to having the income from their wealth taxed at a low rate, the principal of their wealth is completely untaxed either directly or indirectly. Assuming they and their heirs spend only the income earned on the wealth each year, the tax rate today is 15 percent. In contrast, under the FairTax, the effective tax rate is 23 percent. Hence, the very wealthy will pay more taxes when the FairTax is enacted. In a nutshell, those who spend more will pay more but low, moderate and middle income taxpayers will benefit from the greatest gains in reduced tax liabilities.

For more information on this topic, see Why the FairTax Will Work.

Do you think President Obama is doing his job?

By Morris Clopton, 19 May 2010

The people of the United States elected President Barack Hussein Obama to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Article II, Section 1

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the Time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: -“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.”

Do you think President Obama is doing his job?

President Obama sworn in chooses to ignore the oath he swore as president of the United States. Instead, President Obama and his legion of Czars take actions disregarding the Constitution of the United States with the full consent of his democratic congress. No precept, law, or common decency enables the president of the United States of America take over private enterprises with dictatorial action. The sad commentary on the American people is the lack of outcry at this blatant rape of capitalism and free enterprise. The actions of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the democratic congress completely disregard the will of the American people.

The openness promised by candidate Obama hides in closed-door sessions, arm-twisting of members of congress, solicitation of favors to further President Obama’s radical policies. President Obama praises Socialist world leaders and damns the people of the United States for standing up for what is right and speaking out against aggression by a corrupt government. The congress and President Obama chastises China for denying human rights while trampling on the rights Americans.

President Obama and his democratic congress sets policy allowing US companies to drill for oil a thousand miles off shore but with the stroke of the same pen allows China, Vietnam, Japan and other foreign countries to drill for oil within a hundred miles of our borders. President Obama gives Brazil a billion dollars to further oil exploration of the coast of Brazil and denies US companies the opportunity to drill for known oil sources in ANWAR, Alaska a desolate unpopulated, almost inhabitable area rich in oil. Check out this article on Anwar: http://www.warriorsfortruth.com/alaska-oil-anwar.html. Oil exists in numerous areas of the United States and in our coastal waters. The refusal by President Obama and his democratic congress to allow retrieval of our oil borders on criminal action allowing the price of gasoline, diesel to raise sucking life out of our economic society.

The recent discrediting of the gallant actions of Governor Jan Brewer in Arizona to protect the residents with degrading and comical remarks demonstrates the low levels to which President Obama will sink to promote his racial politics. Snide remarks in high political offices by individuals who admittedly have not read the law passed in Arizona by Governor Brewer seeking to enforce federal laws demonstrates the lack of real effort to make a difference.

Seek out information, become educated and aware of the world around you and VOTE!

September 16, 2009
The Meaning Of The Constitution
by Edwin Meese III
WebMemo #2616

An excerpt from The Heritage Guide to the Constitution

The Constitution of the United States has endured for over two centuries. It remains the object of reverence for nearly all Americans and an object of admiration by peoples around the world. William Gladstone was right in 1878 when he described the U.S. Constitution as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”

Part of the reason for the Constitution’s enduring strength is that it is the complement of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration provided the philosophical basis for a government that exercises legitimate power by “the consent of the governed,” and it defined the conditions of a free people, whose rights and liberty are derived from their Creator. The Constitution delineated the structure of government and the rules for its operation, consistent with the creed of human liberty proclaimed in the Declaration.

Justice Joseph Story, in his Familiar Exposition of the Constitution (1840), described our Founding document in these terms:

We shall treat [our Constitution], not as a mere compact, or league, or confederacy, existing at the mere will of any one or more of the States, during their good pleasure; but, (as it purports on its face to be) as a Constitution of Government, framed and adopted by the people of the United States, and obligatory upon all the States, until it is altered, amended, or abolished by the people, in the manner pointed out in the instrument itself.

By the diffusion of power–horizontally among the three separate branches of the federal government, and vertically in the allocation of power between the central government and the states–the Constitution’s Framers devised a structure of government strong enough to ensure the nation’s future strength and prosperity but without sufficient power to threaten the liberty of the people.

The Constitution and the government it establishes “has a just claim to [our] confidence and respect,” George Washington wrote in his Farewell Address (1796), because it is “the offspring of our choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers uniting security with energy, and containing, within itself, a provision for its own amendment.”

The Constitution was born in crisis, when the very existence of the new United States was in jeopardy. The Framers understood the gravity of their task. As Alexander Hamilton noted in the general introduction to The Federalist,

[A]fter an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting federal govern­ment, [the people] are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the Union, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world.

Several important themes permeated the completed draft of the Constitution. The first, reflecting the mandate of the Declaration of Independence, was the recognition that the ultimate authority of a legitimate government depends on the consent of a free people. Thomas Jefferson had set forth the basic principle in his famous formulation:

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 “all men are created equal” means that they are equally endowed with unalienable rights. Nature does not single out who is to govern and who is to be governed; there is no divine right of kings. Nor are rights a matter of legal privilege or the benevolence of some ruling class. Fundamental rights exist by nature, prior to government and conventional laws. It is because these individual rights are left unsecured that governments are instituted among men.

Consent is the means by which equality is made politically operable and whereby arbitrary power is thwarted. The natural standard for judging if a government is legitimate is whether that government rests on the consent of the governed. Any political powers not derived from the consent of the governed are, by the laws of nature, illegitimate and hence unjust.

The “consent of the governed” stands in contrast to “the will of the majority,” a view more current in European democracies. The “consent of the governed” describes a situation where the people are self-governing in their communities, religions, and social institutions, and into which the government may intrude only with the people’s consent. There exists between the people and limited government a vast social space in which men and women, in their individual and corporate capacities, may exercise their self-governing liberty. In Europe, the “will of the majority” signals an idea that all decisions are ultimately political and are routed through the government. Thus, limited government is not just a desirable objective; it is the essential bedrock of the American polity.

A second fundamental element of the Constitution is the concept of checks and balances. As James Madison famously wrote in The Federalist No. 51,

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to controul the governed; and in the next place oblige it to controul itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary controul on the government; but experience has taught mankind necessity of auxiliary precautions.

These “auxiliary precautions” constitute the improved science of politics offered by the Framers and form the basis of their “Republican remedy for the diseases most incident to Republican Government” (The Federalist No. 10).

The “diseases most incident to Republican Government” were basically two: democratic tyranny and democratic ineptitude The first was the problem of majority faction, the abuse of minority or individual rights by an “interested and overbearing” majority. The second was the problem of making a democratic form of government efficient and effective. The goal was limited but energetic government. The constitutional object was, as the late constitutional scholar Herbert Storing said, “a design of government with the powers to act and a structure to make it act wisely and responsibly.”

The particulars of the Framers’ political science were catalogued by Madison’s celebrated collaborator in The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton. Those particulars included such devices as representation, bicameralism, independent courts of law, and the “regular distribution of powers into distinct departments;’ as Hamilton put it in The Federalist No. 9; these were “means, and powerful means, by which the excellencies of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided.”

Central to their institutional scheme was the principle of separation of powers. As Madison bluntly put it in The Federalist No. 47, the “preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct,” for, as he also wrote, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Madison described in The Federalist No. 51 how structure and human nature could be marshaled to protect liberty:

[T]he great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.

Thus, the separation of powers frustrates designs for power and at the same time creates an incentive to collaborate and cooperate, lessening conflict and concretizing a practical community of interest among political leaders.

Equally important to the constitutional design was the concept of federalism. At the Constitutional Convention there was great concern that an overreaction to the inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation might produce a tendency toward a single centralized and all-powerful national government. The resolution to such fears was, as Madison described it in The Federalist, a government that was neither wholly federal nor wholly national but a composite of the two. A half-century later, Alexis de Tocqueville would celebrate democracy in America as precisely the result of the political vitality spawned by this “incomplete” national government.

The institutional design was to divide sovereignty between two different levels of political entities, the nation and the states. This would prevent an unhealthy concentration of power in a single government. It would provide, as Madison said in The Federalist No. 51, a “double security. .. to the rights of the people.” Federalism, along with separation of powers, the Framers thought, would be the basic principled matrix of American constitutional liberty. “The different governments;’ Madison concluded, “will controul each other; at the same time that each will be controulled by itself.”

But institutional restraints on power were not all that federalism was about. There was also a deeper understanding–in fact, a far richer understanding–of why federalism mattered. When the delegates at Philadelphia convened in May 1787 to revise the ineffective Articles of Confederation, it was a foregone conclusion that the basic debate would concern the proper role of the states. Those who favored a diminution of state power, the Nationalists, saw unfettered state sovereignty under the Articles as the problem; not only did it allow the states to undermine congressional efforts to govern, it also rendered individual rights insecure in the hands of “interested and overbearing majorities.” Indeed, Madison, defending the Nationalists’ constitutional handiwork, went so far as to suggest in The Federalist No. 51 that only by way of a “judicious modification” of the federal principle was the new Constitution able to remedy the defects of popular, republican government.

The view of those who doubted the political efficacy of the new Constitution was that good popular government depended quite as much on a political community that would promote civic or public virtue as on a set of institutional devices designed to check the selfish impulses of the majority As Herbert Storing has shown, this concern for community and civic virtue tempered and tamed somewhat the Nationalists’ tendency toward simply a large nation. Their reservations, as Storing put it, echo still through our political history.[1]

It is this understanding, that federalism can contribute to a sense of political community and hence to a kind of public spirit, that is too often ignored in our public discussions about federalism. But in a sense, it is this understanding that makes the American experiment in popular government truly the novel undertaking the Framers thought it to be.

At bottom, in the space left by a limited central government, the people could rule themselves by their own moral and social values, and call on local political institutions to assist them. Where the people, through the Constitution, did consent for the central government to have a role, that role would similarly be guided by the people’s sense of what was valuable and good as articulated through the political institutions of the central government. Thus, at its deepest level popular government means a structure of government that rests not only on the consent of the governed, but also on a structure of government wherein the views of the people and their civic associations can be expressed and translated into public law and public policy, subject, of course, to the limits established by the Constitution. Through deliberation, debate, and compromise, a public consensus is formed about what constitutes the public good. It is this consensus on fundamental principles that knits individuals into a community of citizens. And it is the liberty to determine the morality of a community that is an important part of our liberty protected by the Constitution.

The Constitution is our most fundamental law. It is, in its own words, “the supreme Law of the Land.” Its translation into the legal rules under which we live occurs through the actions of all government entities, federal and state. The entity we know as “constitutional law” is the creation not only of the decisions of the Supreme Court, but also of the various Congresses and of the President.

Yet it is the court system, particularly the decisions of the Supreme Court, that most observers identify as providing the basic corpus of “constitutional law.” This body of law, this judicial handiwork, is, in a fundamental way, unique in our scheme, for the Court is charged routinely, day in and day out, with the awesome task of addressing some of the most basic and most enduring political questions that face our nation. The answers the Court gives are very important to the stability of the law so necessary for good government. But as constitutional historian Charles Warren once noted, what is most important to remember is that “however the Court may interpret the provisions of the Constitution, it is still the Constitution which is the law, not the decisions of the Court.”[2]

By this, of course, Warren did not mean that a constitutional decision by the Supreme Court lacks the character of binding law. He meant that the Constitution remains the Constitution and that observers of the Court may fairly consider whether a particular Supreme Court decision was right or wrong. There remains in the country a vibrant and healthy debate among the members of the Supreme Court, as articulated in its opinions, and between the Court and academics, politicians, columnists and commentators, and the people generally, on whether the Court has correctly understood and applied the fundamental law of the Constitution. We have seen throughout our history that when the Supreme Court greatly misconstrues the Constitution, generations of mischief may follow. The result is that, of its own accord or through the mechanism of the appointment process, the Supreme Court may come to revisit some of its doctrines and try, once again, to adjust its pronouncements to the commands of the Constitution.

This recognition of the distinction between constitutional law and the Constitution itself produces the conclusion that constitutional decisions, including those of the Supreme Court, need not be seen as the last words in constitutional construction. A correlative point is that constitutional interpretation is not the business of courts alone but is also, and properly, the business of all branches of government. Each of the three coordinate branches of government created and empowered by the Constitution–the executive and legislative no less than the judicial–has a duty to interpret the Constitution in the performance of its official functions. In fact, every official takes a solemn oath precisely to that effect. Chief Justice John Marshall, in Marbury v. Madison (1803), noted that the Constitution is a limitation on judicial power as well as on that of the executive and legislative branches. He reiterated that view in McCullough v. Maryland (1819) when he cautioned judges never to forget it is a constitution they are expounding.

The Constitution–the original document of 1787 plus its amendments–is and must be understood to be the standard against which all laws, policies, and interpretations should be measured. It is our fundamental law because it represents the settled and deliberate will of the people, against which the actions of government officials must be squared. In the end, the continued success and viability of our democratic Republic depends on our fidelity to, and the faithful exposition and interpretation of, this Constitution, our great charter of liberty.

Edwin Meese III is Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy and Chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. This essay is excerpted from The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, a line-by-line analysis of the original meaning of each clause of the United States Constitution, edited by David Forte and Matthew Spalding.

[1]Herbert J. Storing, “The Constitution and the Bill of Rights.” in Joseph M. Bessette, ed., Toward a More Perfect Union: Writings of Herbert J. Storing (Washington, D.C.: The AEI Press, 1995).

[2]Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1922-1924), 3 vols., 470-471.

The Ten Commandments According to Obama
By Patriot Update

© 2009 The Patriot Update. Feel free to circulate this article, but please link / give credit to The Patriot Update.

After observing Obama on the campaign trail and during his first six months in office, we have concluded that our President lives and governs according to his own set of “Ten Commandments.” They’re certainly NOT the Ten Commandments you learned in Sunday School. In fact, many are the direct opposite! To prove that our conclusions are correct, you will find a link to source documentation for each commandment on the Patriot Update web site.

I. Thou shalt have no God in America, except for me. For we are no longer a Christian nation and, after all, I am the chosen One. (And like God, I do not have a birth certificate.) SOURCE

II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, unless it is my face carved on Mt. Rushmore. SOURCE

III. Thou shalt not utter my middle name in vain (or in public). Only I can say Barack Hussein Obama. SOURCE

IV. Remember tax day, April 15th, to keep it holy. SOURCE

V. Honour thy father and thy mother until they are too old and sick to care for. They will cost our public-funded health-care system too much money. SOURCE

VI. Thou shalt not kill, unless you have an unwanted, unborn baby. For it would be an abomination to punish your daughter with a baby. SOURCE

VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery if you are conservative or a Republican. Liberals and Democrats are hereby forgiven for all of their infidelity and immorality, but the careers of conservatives will be forever destroyed. SOURCE

VIII. Thou shalt not steal, until you’ve been elected to public office. Only then is it acceptable to take money from hard-working, successful citizens and give it to those who do not work, illegal immigrants, or those who do not have the motivation to better their own lives. SOURCE

IX. Thou shalt not discriminate against thy neighbor unless they are conservative, Caucasian, or Christian. SOURCE

X. Thou shalt not covet because it is simply unnecessary. I will place such a heavy tax burden on those that have achieved the American Dream that, by the end of my term as President, nobody will have any wealth or material goods left for you to covet. SOURCE

The U.S. Department of Injustice
Michelle Malkin – Syndicated Columnist – 6/5/2009 11:20:00 AM

The U.S. Department of Justice seal bears a Latin phrase: “Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur.” The motto refers to the attorney general, “who prosecutes on behalf of Lady Justice.” But under President Barack Obama’s politically corrupt DOJ, Lady Justice is getting the shaft.

To wit: Let’s examine the uproar over Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to protect hate-mongering thugs who harassed and bullied precinct workers and voters on Election Day in Philadelphia.

Oh, wait. There’s been no uproar. Let me tell you why.

Two weeks ago, in a highly unusual move, Holder dismissed default judgments his department had won against two of three defendants charged with violating the Voting Rights Act. On Nov. 4, 2008, a billy club-wielding militant in military-style boots and beret stood outside a Philly polling location with a similarly dressed partner. Citizen journalists from the Pennsylvania-based blog Election Journal captured the menacing duo on video. One of the watchdogs observed: “I think it might be a little intimidating that you have a stick in your hand.” (See related article)

That was an understatement. Witness Bartle Bull, a Democratic lawyer who organized for Bobby Kennedy and worked for the civil rights movement in Mississippi, signed a sworn affidavit decrying the Election Day brutishness. Serving as a poll watcher that day, he called the behavior of Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson “the most blatant form of voter discrimination I have encountered in my life.”

One of them, Bull reported, taunted poll observers: “You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.”

If the pair had been dressed in white sheets, pandemonium would have broken loose. But the ebony-clad thugs were members of the New Black Panther Party who had been dispatched by Malcolm X wannabe Malik Shabazz to “guard” the polls. Translation: Protect them from scrutiny. Shield them from sunlight. Keep independent voters and observers out.

Who is Malik Shabazz? The bespectacled race hustler grabbed the spotlight in the weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks by defending Osama bin Laden, blaming President Bush for 9/11, bashing Israel and blasting our Founding Fathers as “snakes.” His group also infamously rallied behind the Duke University lacrosse rape hoaxer. And on the day before the presidential election last fall, one of Shabazz’s “field marshals,” Minister Najee Muhammad, held a “black power” rally promising to send his forces to polls across the country “to ensure that the enemy does not sabotage the black vote.”

The Bush DOJ filed suit against Malik Shabazz, Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson in early January 2009. None of the defendants filed an answer to the lawsuit, putting them all into default. Instead of taking the default judgment that DOJ is entitled to against all of the defendants, the Obama team fully dismissed the lawsuits against Malik Shabazz and Jackson. Jackson, you should know, is an elected member of the Philadelphia Democratic Committee and was a credentialed poll watcher. Witness Greg Lugones told me, “Obama campaign operatives were on site throughout the entire episode.”

Former Justice Department official and voting rights scholar Hans von Spakovsky added: “I have never heard of the Department dismissing a case it has already won by default. They have…sent the message that hurling racial epithets and slurs at voters and intimidating and threatening voters at the polls is fine with the Holder Justice Department — at least if you are African-American. I seriously doubt that would have happened if the races had been reversed in this case.”

Exactly. And the harassment was aimed not just at voters, but at white poll workers trying to ensure a fair and lawful process in a city infamous for machine politics and street money pollution.

Who are the racial cowards, Holder?

On the heels of this voter intimidation protection plan, the Obama Justice Department issued another decision that undermines electoral integrity — but bolsters Democratic voter drives. The department this week denied the state of Georgia the ability to enact strict citizenship voter-verification rules previously approved by two federal courts. As Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel explained: “DOJ has thrown open the door for activist organizations such as ACORN to register non-citizens to vote in Georgia’s elections, and the state has no ability to verify an applicant’s citizenship status or whether the individual even exists.”

On top of all that, Holder recently politicized the legal review process involving the contentious issue of DC voting rights. After careful study, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued an opinion that a House bill on the matter was unconstitutional. Holder, who supports DC voting rights along with Obama, overrode his staff lawyers’ ruling — and simply ordered up an alternative opinion that fit the White House agenda.

Lady Justice is now protected by a security force armed with billy clubs and lawyers who serve the cause of protecting the re-election of Barack Obama over the rule of law.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.