The Declaration of Independence speaks our nature as a People ... The Constitution frames our Union. Our history belongs to us all, not just a corps of black-robed functionaries. Here, with amusement and sometimes bemusement, I speak of these things.
Growing up, most of us had that one friend in our group, the one whose judgment was reliable only in the sense that it was always bad.
"Your parents won't even know we took the car."
His squeaky, early adolescent, 14 year old's voice, cajoled you and the others to take the car for a joy ride.
"They don't have cameras in the bathrooms, stupid, they'll never know who set fire to the trash can. Man, it's too nice a day to be stuck in school!"
"The back doors on these places never have alarms, let's just pry the door open and see what we find!"
The difference between you and that moron is that you knew your parents would know, that someone would tell who set the fire, and that lots of businesses use alarm systems to protect themselves from economic harm.
On the not so shady side, maybe it was just the bad idea of building an underground fort ... who knew underground structures should be reinforced against collapse? Or his idea for fun around the campfire, playing a game of tossing matches at a gas can?
Here you are, though. You survived his completely insane disconnect with reality.
Today, if he were to say these things to you, you'd ask him when he might be growing up. And if you learned that one of your kids had a friend like him, it would be time for one of those cozy conversations about how you nearly didn't survive your teenage years.
Now that you have developed a mature judgment about such things, you can chuckle about his insanities, but you would never again be tempted by them.
Just imagine that knucklehead being put in charge of a Nation's relationships with other every other nation on the planet. Imagine such a person being made the Secretary of State of the United States.
In fact, rather than imagine such a circumstance, just think about our near bellicose collision with the United Kingdom and Ecuador when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed conducted a drone strike on the Ecuadorian Embassy to kill Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks.
Talk about collateral damage.
H/T to @ColumbiaBugle and @TruePundit for the story of Hillary's "it would be hilarious if it weren't a story about a serious contender for the presidency." You can read the details here.
I just thought, in case things weren't clear, we ought to look at what Hillary thought the Obama Administration should do to stop embarrassing leaks coming from @Wikileaks.
First, to get a clear perspective, understand that Hillary, as Secretary of State, was in Washington, DC, here in America, and Julian Assange, then as now fleeing a trumped up charge out of Sweden, had taken residence in the Embassy of Ecuador in London, England.
This map shows the USA and the UK in relation to each other:
This map shows "Foggy Bottom," the headquarters of the US Department of State, which is located in Southwest Washington, DC, near the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and The George Washington University:
Apparently Hillary gets her craziest ideas when she's there (odd that she didn't direct a drone strike, or a dozen, against the murderous terrorists attacking Benghazi, though).
Now, if we go, as the Brits say, "across the pond" to England, we can get an idea about what it was that Hillary "Major Kong" Clinton proposed to do.
The Ecuadorian Embassy is located in London. You can see London's location here:
Now, London has been around for some two thousand years, so it's had a long time to grow. It is a large metropolis. So here is a map shows the location of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London:
You might not have noticed, so go back and look at that last map again. Do you see the property located about 4000 feet to the east of the embassy? Yes, that's right. That is Buckingham Palace.
Buckingham Palace is home to some famous folks. In particular, England's Monarch, Queen Elizabeth spends time there. Sometimes, as here, she spends that time waving to her loyal subjects. We've seen so many photos of this sort: the young Queen, the Queen with her young children, the Queen with her adult children and their spouses, and then with grandchildren.
Now, at 3 am Eastern Standard Time today, October 4, 2016, we all expected Julian Assange to make a major, and long-awaited announcement of information regarding our deeply disturbed former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
Here you can see Assange at the very window where he might have appeared to make that announcement.
Remember, that window is less than a mile from the one where the Queen thrills the hearts of her loyal subjects with an appearance and a wave.
And Hillary Clinton, who thinks that Donald Trump cannot be trusted to have access to America's nuclear arsenal, wanted to conduct a drone strike targeting Assange in the Embassy of Ecuador (which, by international law, is the sovereign territory of Ecuador) in the heart of London, in the sovereign territory of the United Kingdom, all within a mile of Buckingham Palace.
In case you forgot about it, Hillary Clinton stated her case against Trump's fitness quite distinctly:
"A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons."
Yes, that was her standard. She laid it out in her dreadful nomination acceptance speech. Odd thing though. Look how easily it can be transmogrified to fit Clinton's insane proposal to send a drone to strike the Ecuadorian Embassy in London:
"A woman you can bait with document leaks is not a woman we can trust with nuclear weapons."
Seriously, there are deeply disturbing aspects to this revelation.
Yes, it is surprising that Clinton, as Secretary of State, proposed attacking Ecuador and the United Kingdom. I wasn't aware we were then in a state of war with either nation, or, for that matter, that we were at war with the non-existent State of Wikileaks.
And, given collateral damages reported with virtually every US-orchestrated drone strike, it is surprising that Clinton proposed such a strike in the largest metropolis in the United Kingdom, and in such close proximity to the home of Queen Elizabeth.
Perhaps Clinton thought drones were, well, the size the balsa wood gliders we liked to throw as kids? Here's a drone on the tarmac in Italy, ready to take flight. The serviceman on the tarmac in front of it gives you some perspective on size. Depending on the particular mission and drone, these may be equipped with Hellfire Missiles or other ordinance.
When the US military conducted a drone strike on the Syrian city of Kobani, the immediate aftermath was captured in a photograph, shown on the left here.
Imagine the mind that suggests that we inflict this kind of attack on TWO SOVEREIGN NATIONS AT ONCE!
Actually, you don't have to imagine that mind, the Democrats nominated that mind to be the next President of the United States: Hillary Clinton.
Of course, you'll tell me to calm down.
You'll say, "but it never happened" or "cooler minds prevailed." Small comfort. As President of the United States, the contents of cooler minds do not TRUMP the orders of the President.
Do we really want a raving lunatic, whose first response to embarrassment, is a tantrum proposing a war-like assault on our longest standing ally, near the gears of war, the arsenals of destruction, the seat of American might?
A man walks into #Pulse, a nightclub that is intentionally welcoming to LGBQT folk. He is armed with a handgun and a Sig Sauer MCX rifle, and, apparently, hundreds of rounds of ammo. In the narratives released so far, he proceeds, by fits and starts over an extended late night period, to murder 49 people and wound some 53 additional folks.
While on his rampage, he speaks with 9-1-1. In one of his three calls, he pledges allegiance to ISIS.
Later, we learn
that he had scouted this location;
that he had used gay dating applications or websites;
that his former wife suspected he was gay and that she heard his father call him gay;
that he was incensed when, with his three year old son, he witnessed to men kissing in public;
that he had been the subject of FBI investigation at least once (after making threats against co-workers); and
that, when he recently sought to purchase ammo and body armor, he was denied and reported to law enforcement.
Was he a radical Islamic terrorist? Was he a self-loathing and closeted homosexual? Was he just a whacko?
If you need to be spoon fed the conclusions, just monitor the White House, DOJ, and FBI websites, they will tell you what to think.
So far, what they've told you to think is that there was no direct connection to ISIS, no evidence that his actions were "ordered" from abroad.
Okay. Am I to be comforted by that story?
Let me answer this way.
In 12th Century England, Henry II of England appointed his friend, Thomas Becket as Chancellor. When the opportunity created by the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury arose, Henry named Becket to that additional post. Henry's design was that he could consolidate power over the Catholic church if the principal prelate of England were "his man."
A dispute subsequently arose over the power of the Crown courts to try clergy for crimes. The immediate context was that a cleric alleged responsible for a murder had been acquitted by an ecclesiastical court. Great public outcry led the Crown to take advantage of the moment and insist that the Church acquiesce in a civil trial.
Becket refused. Instead, he stood with the authority of the Church to try its own. When two other English bishops disagreed and consented to this shift in power, Becket interdicted them. As personal risk grew great, Becket fled to France.
Henry and Becket made up, it seems, when Henry was in France, and Becket returned to Canterbury. While still in France, Henry learned that his restored friend refused to lift the interdiction of the bishops or to tolerate the assertion by England's civil courts over Roman clergy. In a rage, it is reported that Henry cried out:
"What sluggards, what cowards have I brought up in my court, who care nothing for their allegiance to their lord. Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest."
Taking the king's words as a command, knights took it upon themselves to confront Becket. He would not relent. When he refused to relent, they slew him on the alter of the church.
In the circumstance of the time, Henry had a thing politicians call "plausible deniability."
He didn't, it seems, mention murder or death, nor did he instruct anyone to execute Becket. He was better situated than that. He had the kind of men surrounding him whose hearts were inclined to run ahead of the king's commands and meet his needs.
Hard to relate to?
Maybe or maybe not.
If you've ever been out to dinner and noticed that your beverage glass is replenished without request, you recognize that there is a kind of servant of need that doesn't wait for need to be stated, or for the giving of instructions on how satisfaction to be given.
The murderer Mateen -- self-loathing gay or clever straight, devout Muslim or radical Islamic terrorist or madman -- didn't receive orders from ISIS (or Hamas, or al Qaeda, or the Taliban). What cold comfort that is for the hundreds of family members binding up the wounded minds and bodies of the lucky shooting survivors! What solace it must offer to the bereaved!
I think not.
ISIS has 20,000 to 35,000 armed militants (the commonly reported number dating to late 2014) or 200,000 militants (the number asserted by certain Kurdish leaders). Neither end of that range begins to illuminate just how terribly dangerous Mateen's actions show these times to be.
We are, for the most part, untouched by the acts of 20,000 or 200,000 ISIS soldiers in Iraq and Syria. Certainly, we know that we need not send to see for whom the bell tolls, that the deaths of so many touch us in a way.
But those far-flung battlefield deaths do not touch us as do the murderous rampages of Orlando, San Bernardino, Chattanooga, Fort Hood. For these acts are taken by those among us. Those who live with us, and, as in Fort Hood and San Bernardino, who work with us. Or, as facts have developed in Orlando, by those that dance with us and go clubbing with us.
And yet "no connection has been made between the shooter and ISIS."
Does ISIS have to quote Henry II before this administration realizes that the instructions of radical Islamic terrorists abroad could not be more clearly given to radical Islamic terrorists at home? What must ISIS do for this administration to come to terms with this mortal enemy? Must they send telegrams or Instagrams or Tweets to particular wolves among us, naming particular targets among us for the Obama collective to grasp the fact that ISIS is not just waging war against Iraq, against Syria, against Israel (after all, why else would it call itself the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant).
As surely as Henry II caused the death of Becket by his plaintive cry in the hearing of willing hearts, ISIS has placed a contract on America through its messages.
In fact, we know that ISIS is waging war against social services workers (San Bernardino), military recruiters (Chattanooga), soldiers and civil servants (Fort Hood), and members of the LGBQT community (Orlando). The simpering foolishness that comes from Obama, in a televised tantrum over the insistence that he call these attacks instances of radical Islamic terrorism, shames him and embarrasses us. The nonsensical and now failed effort to shield from public view the direct evidence of radical Islamic terrorist motivation evidenced in the remarks of Mateen shames Attorney General Lynch and embarrasses us.
But I've been embarrassed and survived. You probably have survived embarrassments too. The problem with Obama's pandering pedantry is that it produces results that are NOT survivable. Results such as being ventilated by a madman with a gun. It is past time, hopefully not impossibly past time, for the insanity to end. All our lives may depend on it.
I don't want Obama running around the world apologizing for things. But, there you go. He's already apologized, bowed, scraped, on a global scale. Now he's gone to Vietnam (and used the visit to lift a ban on the sale of weapons to that communist country) and will be traveling next to Japan. Of course, the trip has made headlines for weeks as Obama's plans in Japan include a visit to Hiroshima. No other sitting president of the United States has visited the site of the first war-time, military use of an atomic weapon. There are many who are repulsed by the idea that Obama might apologize for the action authorized by America's only nuclear madman president, Harry Truman. Maybe you think he should apologize? Those two bombings -- Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- targeted Japanese sites that did have military components, but, at the same time, those bombs were vastly destructive of civilian communities. At the time, and now, one might well argue that such targeting violated international treaties and covenants on the targeting of civilian populations. Maybe you think he should not apologize? Those two bombings averted the need for a ground war in Japan, with the potential cost in military and civilian lives of an estimate of a million or more. I'm going to ask your toleration of the following. My dad fought in the Pacific Theater of WWII. He also fought in the Korean Conflict. He also served in the Vietnam Conflict. He was a "maverick." He started as an enlisted man. He ended as a full bird Colonel. After WWII, he graduated from law school, attended OCS and was commissioned as a Marine officer. He later became a Staff Judge Advocate, then a member of the intermediate Navy-Marine Court of Review, and finally, the senior judge of the Navy-Marine Corps' Piedmont District. In our home, growing up, Pops didn't talk to me, or around me, about his wartime experiences with battle, with engaging the enemy. At most, he would talk about his interaction with Samoans when he was stationed there, and with generous host families on New Zealand, where he and other Marines took R & R during WWII. But, no, he didn't talk about engagement with the enemy. In my whole life, he never talked about shooting and killing a Japanese sniper in the south Pacific. After he died, I learned that he carried with him and kept for the rest of his life, three photographs that he took from the body of that dead sniper. But he never talked of it to us kids. There was what seemed at the time to be the amusing anecdote that we would all recognize now as PTSD. He and Mother walking in downtown, I think Albuquerque, after he returned from the Korean Conflict. A car backfired loudly. Mother looked around and Pops was gone. When the explosive backfire occurred, he did what every sensible Marine did and hit the deck. Big laughs. Ha Ha Ha. Except, of course, now we understand how terribly damaging to the psyche war is, even if one counts themselves a fortunate survivor or even a victor. As he approached second retirement -- he spent nearly two decades teaching police officers and other law enforcement personnel of the Commonwealth of Kentucky about the Constitution, criminal law, criminal procedure, and related topics at the Kentucky Police Academy -- he spent some time writing out some of his experiences in war, but still those recollections were mainly focused on the non-combat, non-lethal, sometimes amusing side of things. He did write one letter, though. I've mentioned it on here before. As I understand the letter, he sent it only to his five sons, Paul Henderson, Dave Henderson, Joe Henderson, Tom Henderson, and me, Jim Henderson. He expressed regrets about choices he made in life, particularly once there was a family and children to be affected by how he pursued his military career. He also gave us each a book. That book embodied objective information about the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It was written by a Catholic physician who, until he also succumbed to leukemia likely the result of exposure to radiation from the Nagasaki bombing, worked to heal, help, and soothe those whose lives were savaged by that bombing. Until I read the book and then further studied the bombing of Nagasaki, I had never really considered the most peculiarly unChristian nature of that particular bombing. Francis Xavier is largely considered responsible for Christianity's first rise in Japan. He planted churches there, and before the persecutions of the Church and the declaration of being a Christian constituting a Capital crime, Christianity flourished in Japan and eventually, before persecution, the Catholic Christian population of Japan number in the millions. With persecution, the numbers of Christians dwindled. There were pockets of Christianity that remained and persevered despite persecution. One of those communities flourished in Nagasaki. At the time of the bombing of Nagasaki, the baptized community of the Nagasaki cathedral exceeded 12,000. There they were. Twelve thousand who followed Christ, and if faithful, did not worship the Emperor. Twelve thousand that, if properly catechized abhorred war-making and the idea of racial superiority so endemic in Japanese culture. Yet, on the day of the bombing, those Christians, brothers and sisters of yours and mine in Christ, were set to fire like matches, reduced to ashes, or, were horribly disfigured and endowed with the ticking time bombs of massive radiation exposure. How did that come to be? Let me step forward to today. In the American evangelical community, there are a lot of popular concepts about "persecution." If Walmart changes its seasonal decorations and verbiage to "holiday" themes rather than "Christmas" ones, it's the war on Christmas. Ditto for the cancellation of public school Christmas pageants, etc. These, of course, have nothing to do with true persecution. On the other hand, there are evidences of real persecution in America. When a person is targeted by the government of their State or their Nation because their religious beliefs compel them to refrain from certain behaviors, and the State or federal government coerces them to choose between surrendering their conscience or their liberties (including their economic liberties), that is, at least, the camel's nose of persecution under the tent flap. During this present administration, it is becoming easier and easier for evangelicals to connect with the idea of persecution. As the definition of marriage has been changed by the Supreme Court in the Obergefell decision, as the definition of good health insurance has been changed by Obamacare to include the provision of mandatory provision of coverage for contraceptives, including those known to cause abortions rather than prevent conception, evangelicals are recognizing that there has arisen in this Nation "a king that knew not Joseph." [Exodus 1:8 "Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph"] In a nation that, by history and common acclaim, "is a Christian nation," suddenly accepted notions of life and conduct are disputed. And stubborn adherence to those notions, more and more, has attached to it the risk of losing the right to participate in the economy, and the risk of losing life savings and the like. In fact, well-informed evangelicals who have followed the rapid progress of an agenda quite at odds with Christian teachings, and of the greater and greater frequency of conflict with that agenda, might reasonably conclude that what has actually happened is that American Christianity has been targeted by progressives due to the risks that a vigorous Christianity presents to progressive social agendas. Now, such targeting might be viewed as the product of overly paranoid Christians. In fact, the Bill Mahers of the info- and edu-tainment set insist that is all that it is. Not so the death and destruction of the Christian community of Nagasaki. When the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, the bombardier used the steeple of the Nagasaki Catholic cathedral as his target. The airburst of that atomic bomb occurred over the heart of surviving Japanese Christianity. In its aftermath, it is estimated that the bomb caused the immediate death of 6,000 of Nagasaki's baptized Christians. Thousands more died, with the passage of time, and the ravages of either blast injuries or radiation exposure. "A Song for Nagasaki" recounts that Catholic physician's experience with the blast, and with the brief lifetime of care given to survivors. Now, Obama will be visiting Hiroshima, not Nagasaki. He will not see the 1000 cherry trees planted on the hillside near the Nagasaki blast site, planted by the author of A Song for Nagasaki. Nor will he meditate on how an American military force, at the command of a Democrat President, waged war in a blinding blast, against Christianity in Japan, in the name of ending conflict with Japan. Of course, were he to meditate on the moment when Democrat Truman unleashed fiery hell from above on Christianity, I think he might, quite likely, allow himself a brief smile and entertain his own foul wish.
The Obama administration's Friday letter -- from the Departments of Justice and Education to school districts around the Nation -- posits constructions of two anti-discrimination statutes, and on the basis of those constructions directs school districts that they must allow individuals to use toileting and showering facilities based on their self-perceived gender identity, rather than limiting access to such facilities based on sex.
Proponents of such actions appeal yet again to the struggle of African Americans for basic civil rights. That appeal should fall flat just as the unfounded interpretations of federal statutes by this administration do fall flat.
Race has been understood to be an immutable characteristic.
I suppose adventures, such as the social experimentation in "Black Like Me" are suggestive of a chameleon like quality to race, but the daily application of pancake or black face to change one's "race" suggests more the immutable character of race.
Sex, likewise, has been understood to be an immutable characteristic. It continues to be such. And, in fact, the transgender kerfuffle doesn't change that.
Take a child, growing up in a boy's body, that "feels" like she is a girl. Give her loving parents that accept this construct of her personality and support her long term goal of transitioning to life AS A WOMAN. The right hormone suppressive drugs are administered. She wears clothing that, in her construct of the feminine, accords with her image of the female. Eventually, at some advanced age, say, 24-25, she has modification surgery often called reassignment surgery. Because the doctors asked politely, she allowed her testes to be donated to science.
She now thinks of herself as a woman. She may, to some greater or lesser extent, resemble a woman.
Is she a woman?
Unbeknownst to her, her doctors transmit her testes to a reproductive research facility. They are part of a research protocol to develop donor testes for survivors of testicular cancer. Ultimately, "her" testes end up in the sack of a guy that thinks he's a guy. A successful transplant, "his" testes from "her" begin producing spermatozoa. He impregnates his wife. The wife gives birth to a son.
Was our misfortunate child a woman?
Does the genetics of it all escape you?
You think that Republicans are all over the bathroom issue? Why is it lost on you that this brouhaha began when the City of Charlotte amended its ordinances, added "gender identity" to its city antidiscrimination laws, and stripped away from private businesses the previous legal protection they had from discrimination.
I should the hell hope that Republicans are all over OVERTURNING the inane stupidities of progressive social engineers run amok.
And, no, Eisenhower was not demanding that a black kid that thought he was a white kid be treated like a white kid would be treated because, as this new movement seems to demand, Eisenhower insisted that the black/white boy's self-conception must be respected.
What Eisenhower, and the law, demand is that we recognize that treating governments treating people differently based on racial classifications violate the color blind Constitution.
The conservative blogosphere is full of the possibility that the President will shortly release a new set of executive actions designed to infringe on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
Patience and fortitude have their place.
But, as Thomas Jefferson quite directly stated, "the tree of liberty must be watered, from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
A President must remain within the bounds of the Constitution.
A President that trespasses on the natural rights of men during his adventure outside of constitutional bounds commits impeachable "high crimes and misdemeanors."
A Congress that observes a criminal and tyrant in office and fails to impeach him for doing so foments conditions of revolution.
Obama is our new King George III.
The Republican Congress is our new Parliament.
The time to say, "enough" and "no more" certainly comes, if it has not passed already.
The very Declaration of Independence that is the fundamental document of this Nation's founding declares the unalterable principle, "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."
That fundamental right -- to remove, by force if necessary, those agents of government and forms of government, that are destructive of liberty -- is as fundamental an aspect of the American experiment as any that claims to be such.
The question remains. Does our George III dare to impose on the great mass of the American people, who will, rather than surrender arms, remove him and do so, if necessary, by force and violence?
Our Nation knows no king. Our Declaration recognizes no right in government to deform or destroy liberty. I do not yearn for revolution, I yearn for the restoration of the American republic as a limited government answerable to the People and compliant with the Constitution.
But the long trail of abuses of this administration, together with the failure to attend to the pleas of the People to rectify these abuses, and to bring the President to heel, will either produce revolution, or serve as our sad epitaph:
Take a trip with me down the road of sensible thinking.
When radio personalities "Don and Mike" were on the air, they had the occasional bit involving "Misheard Lyrics." For example, Creedence Clearwater Revival never recorded "there's a bathroom on the right," although their song "Bad Moon on the Rise" was a hit. Similarly, Paper Lace never recorded a version of "Billy, Don't Be a Negro" but both they and Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods performed "Billy, Don't Be a Hero," a one hit wonder piece about the Vietnam Conflict.
The misheard lyric might be an amusing bit and an interesting phenomenon. And these are undoubtedly cases of mishearing. CCR just never did "There's a Bathroom on the Right." Check their discography. Folks who thought they heard that song are quite surprised to discover that the lyric actually is "There's a bad moon on the rise."
So what?
Well, suppose that we sang the Constitution.
Suppose that in the singing of the Constitution, someone thought the lyric said, "Congress shall make more laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Would the fact that someone, anyone, thought that the lyric was "make more laws" justify Congress ignoring what the Constitution actually says? Be careful how you answer, because while you may be fine with more laws "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion, would you be happy with "more laws" "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press?"
For that matter, both the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment contain Clauses guaranteeing "Due Process of Law." Forget whether you currently understand what "Due Process of Law" means. Just suppose that in our Constitutional Opera, someone thought that the libretto read, "Two crosses and claw." How easy it would be, if the State or the Federal Government wanted to take your property, your liberty, or your life, to obtain two crosses and a claw? Would you voluntarily surrender your property, your liberty, your life, if a Sheriff showed up at your door, with two crosses and a claw? Or would you insist that the Sheriff had gotten it wrong, had misunderstood?
I think you would.
And here's why I asked you to come along with me on this walk.
At the moment where you insist that the Constitution guarantees Due Process of Law, not Two Crosses and a Claw, you put in play the important question of the meaning of the Constitution.
Which of these views do you hold:
The Constitution a document of fixed and discoverable meaning?
The Constitution is a document of changeable meaning?
Is the Constitution a document that offers each of us the permission contained in Humpty's dumpy reasoning: "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'"
You might think this is just a rant on my part, leading to the inevitable, "The Constitution is a leather bound document. Its words are fixed and determinable. If you want to change it, amend it, don't twist it." And, well, yes, it is that too.
But this rant is also a cautionary tale.
On the day when the hard route is to convince two thirds of Congress and three fourths of the States to amend the Constitution to your ends -- clarifying, for example, the exalted constitutional status of abortion rights -- you have gone to the Courts, and with deliberate misdirection, the judges have twisted the Constitution to a new meaning.
On the day when the hard route is to convince two thirds of Congress and three fourths of the States to amend the Constitution to your ends -- prohibiting teacher composed and led prayers in school -- you have gone to the Courts, and with deliberate misdirection, the judges have twisted the Constitution to a new meaning.
Perhaps you feel secure.
But the five judges who rule in favor of your preferred constellation of liberties and rights today, will be moldering in the dirt tomorrow, and how will you fare with the new regime. Social commentary reflects a reality that one generation is often repulsed by and rebels against the mores and excesses of the previous. In the end, we wobble back and forth between the spectrum's ends on a variety of choices and behaviors.
So.
Do you really prefer that the Constitution be the product of misheard lyrics? Do you always get the benefit of the mishearing? Will you always get the benefit of the mishearing?
Of course, put in context of our times, I offer these thoughts so that you will bring them to bear on the Second Amendment to the Constitution. After all, media reports indicate that the White House intends to put a hot spotlight of focus on gun issues in the final year of Obama's presidency.
The Supreme Court decision in the Heller case confirms what readers of history and the amendment have known. At stake in the Second Amendment is the right of an individual to bear arms, and that the particular purpose of those arms was resistance of government tyranny.
Now, you might want to mishear that lyric. But your having misheard it doesn't change its meaning, and won't change our tune. This is the essential right of the People. Even superior to the right of freedom of speech, the right of armed defense against tyranny is the basis of every right.
So next time you're in the car, singing along to "There's a Bathroom on the Right," enjoy it, but leave the lyrics of my Constitution alone.
When the States created the federal government via the ratification of the United States Constitution, among the powers donated to the Congress was power to enforce the "Law of Nations."
The "Law of Nations" is a legal term of art. It refers to the customary body of laws governing relations between nations. Within the scope of the Law of Nations is the question of migration from and to other nations. Thus, whatever were the powers of the States prior to the ratification of the Constitution, with the ratification Congress received that power from the States.
So, it seems quite likely, for this reason, and no other, that the federal government -- Congress specifically -- decides the rules for immigration to the United States. Enforcement of such laws as Congress enacts regarding immigration is the duty of the Executive Branch.
This conclusion is supported in the outcome of longstanding Supreme Court cases, although the reasoning of those cases has not looked to the Law of Nations power exclusively, and, unfortunately, has sometimes taken the view that regulating immigration is a power "inherent to our national sovereignty." That troubling formulation fails to accord respect to the role of the States in creating the federal government, and inquiring whether, and how, their original power over migration was transmitted to the federal government.
While the federal government has the power to regulate migration into the United States under the Law of Nations Enforcement Clause, the question of how to manage the current press to admit refugees from the Syrian crisis is not answered in the Constitution. Rather, the specifics of how to treat refugees is governed by federal statutes.
Under the 1980 Refugee Act, the Congress requires consultation with the States as to placement of refugees, but not approval. Settlement of refugees, however, does not mean that the States are obliged to provide material support and benefits to those refugees; in fact, federal funding is the carrot for the stick of placement. So, this administration should be consulting with the States, and this administration should give consideration to whether unwilling states are the best placement for refugees, if being so placed means not having access to federally funded support programs.
Long and short of it, the Governors are right to take a stand, but wrong to think that the Constitution grants them the power to enforce that stand to the complete exclusion of refugees into their States.
One further matter.
Because refugees are lawfully admitted to the United States, they enjoy the equal protection of the laws. That equal protection is guaranteed against federal violation by the implicit requirement of equal protection in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and by the express requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
In January 2013, two months following the re-election of Barack Obama and four months following the planned, deadly, terrorist attack on America's Benghazi Consulate, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before Congress about the attack, the State Department's security arrangements for the Consulate, and the manner in which the Obama administration represented the attack on television in the immediate aftermath of the attack and in the heated last weeks of Obama's re-election run.
Before going further, here's a link to an excerpt of that testimony. Please watch it again. I know most of you have seen it before. But, please, remind yourself of exactly how Secretary Clinton presented to the Committee her "What difference does it make" rebuke:
A lot of ink has been spilled in pursuit of political agendas and in pursuit of the truth, over the Consulate Benghazi attack. The pursuit of truth, of course, was substantially impeded by the known lie offered by the Obama administration immediately following the attack. You do remember the known lie, yes? That the attack on Benghazi was the result of outrage in the Islamic community over a youtube video that blasphemed that religion?
That was the lie told five times on a Sunday morning five days after the attack by Susan Rice, then the President's National Security Adviser. That lie was not a spontaneous error made once and then forced to be repeated on subsequent talk shows. It was the planned lie. Indeed, it was planned as a deliberate distraction from what the Benghazi attack might really be seen to reveal: the foreign policy failures of the Obama administration.
We know that last fact thanks to the work of Judicial Watch. Its FOIA lawsuits have forced the Obama Administration to produce damning emails.
One of those damning emails came from Ben Rhodes.
Rhodes serves as Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting to President Obama. Rhodes has siblings. In a wonderfully delicious coincidence, his brother is the President of CBS News. Given the absolute failure of CBS News to substantively analyze, or question, the agenda-driven (re-elect Obama), completely false narrative she offered on Face the Nation, it leaves one wondering just how cozy the relationship between CBS's Rhodes and the White House's Rhodes is.
Rhodes emailed tips about preparing Rice for her Sunday morning talk show appearances. Among his tips: "underscore that these protests are rooted in an internet video, and not a broader failure of policy." No, no, certainly not a broader failure of policy. We certainly would not want our National Security Adviser to get on the TV Sunday morning shows and say, "Benghazi was a cluster-f#ck of monumental proportions and is the fault of our failed policies." So, what would she say instead?
Apparently whatever lie Rhodes suggested.
In some way, it may seem unfair to require one to answer for the lies of another ... unless one used their position to lend credence and weight to the false narrative. So while you might sympathize with Hillary Clinton, when called to task on Capitol Hill, no sympathy is warranted. Particularly, no sympathy is warranted because she did not come to Capitol Hill to clear the air, resolve ambiguities, or tell the truth.
How do I know that to be the case?
Well, it's all right up there in that video.
Hillary came to Capitol Hill to continue the venerable Democratic (and governmental) practice of telling bald-faced lies.
Here is the transcript of the relevant exchange between Republican Senator Ron Johnson and Secretary Clinton in that video linked above:
"Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they'd they go kill some Americans?"
You have to literally take the blow by blow with Hillary to catch the full nuance of complete and utter falsehood she unloads in that statement.
Notice the hands and her gaze toward Senator Johnson:
So far, you would be right to conclude that she had not yet lied.
The next moment, however, she will begin to unload 100% Grade A falsehood. But before I explain, here is a bit more background.
When the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee was beginning its investigation into Benghazi, it sent a letter to Secretary Clinton. That letter details an extended series of attacks on American and other foreign facilities and personnel in Libya in the months leading up to the planned terrorist assault on the Benghazi Consulate and the murders of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. This chronology showing the increasing danger of circumstances in Benghazi is based on their letter:
April 6, 2012, BENGHAZI –
IED Attack on Benghazi Consulate
April 11, 2012, BENGHAZI – Gun
battle, including antiaircraft guns and RPGs, within 5 km of the Benghazi
Consulate
April 25, 2012, TRIPOLI – A
US Embassy diplomatically plated vehicle detained and Embassy-issued radio
seized
April 26, 2012, BENGHAZI – Fistfight
and gunfire while a Foreign Service officer attended a trade-related event at
the International Medical University
April 27, 2012, BENGHAZI –
Two South African contractors kidnapped by armed men while walking through a
residential area of Benghazi
May 1, 2012, TRIPOLI – The
Deputy Commander of Embassy Tripoli’s Local Guard Force carjacked, beaten and
detained by a group of armed youth.
May 22, 2012, BENGHAZI – Two
RPG rounds were fired at the Benghazi office of the International Committee of
the Red Cross (ICRC), approximately 1 km from Consulate Benghazi
June 2012 – In June 2012, a
posting on a pro-Gaddafi Facebook page identified Ambassador Stevens daily
exercise schedule and directed a threat against the Ambassador with a photo of
him
June 6, 2012, BENGHAZI – An
IED on the north gate of Consulate Benghazi blew a hole in the security
perimeter “big enough for forty men to go through”
June 10, 2012, BENGHAZI –June
10, 2012, a convoy carrying the British Ambassador was attacked with an RPG.
Late June 2012, BENGHAZI –
The International Committee of the Red Cross building was attacked again, this
time in broad daylight while people were inside.
August 6, 2012, TRIPOLI –
Armed assailants attempt to carjack vehicle with diplomatic plates driven by US
security personnel
WEEKS BEFORE September 11,
2012, BENGHAZI – Unarmed Libyan guards were warned by family members to quit guarding
Consulate Benghazi due to rumors of an impending attack
No wonder that Ambassador Stevens, along with other federal officials detailed to Libya repeatedly requested that security be enhanced there. Of course, if the chronology alone is insufficient to convince you that these repeated and increasing attacks occurred, try denying the visual evidence. Here are photos showing the aftermath of the attack on the convoy carrying the British Ambassador:
As the chronology above mentioned, there was also an RPG attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross in Benghazi. The photo below shows where the rocket propelled grenade entered the ICRC building:
National Security Adviser Susan Rice took to the airwaves and pushed the administration's lying line, recounting a false narrative, that a video that defamed Islam stirred anti American sentiment. White House Creative Writing expert Ben Rhodes urged the lie so that no one would think the Benghazi attack reflected a more general failure of US policy.
Of course, that is precisely what the attack reflected.
The Obama administration shares responsibility with other nations for supporting the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. What ever ill one may speak of that dictator, he kept the more disruptive and violent components of Libyan society in check. Supporting his removal, and his murder, put us in the position of killing the engineer on a train speeding down a straight track into town, knowing that the track curves precipitously in the downtown area. If you do that, you are agreeing to the mayhem that results. And this administration was warned by human rights groups about the dangers to Libyan minority groups inherent in such destabilization. Yet the administration made removing Gaddafi a key component of its middle eastern strategies.
What followed, then, was the trail of disturbances and violence. Nor was our Benghazi consulate the sole target of the violence, as the chronology above showed. And that chronology does not address the domestic harms of the failed policy of this administration for Libyan minorities and ordinary citizens.
So, when Hillary came to Capitol Hill, and did so after the House Committee's letter, mentioned above, pointed to the intensifying violence and danger, and inquired about security arrangements and requests for enhanced security for the Libyan mission, Secretary Clinton obviously practiced and came prepared ... to lie.
Notice, in the video, she omitted "protest over a video defaming Islam. Now, she simply asks, "Was it because of a protest?"
Remember, when she spoke that phrase, she already knew that it was NOT BECAUSE OF A PROTEST. It never was. Yet, in setting up her counterpoise of two competing narratives -- each of which exonerates the Obama administration for failing to respond to security enhancement requests -- she clings to a part of the narrative, that the attack was "because of a protest."
The answer, as the Secretary knew, was, "No, it wasn't because of a protest."
Then she proceeds immediately to offer the alternative, equally false narrative;
So, having proposed that it might have been the result of a protest, she immediately leaps to the alternative, equally false narrative. "Was it because a group of guys were out walking one night and decided to go kill some Americans?"
Well, again, Secretary Clinton knew that the answer to the question was, "No, it wasn't because a 'group of guys were out walking one night and decided to go kill some Americans.'" That narrative offers a skin of truth: that a group of guys decided to kill Americans. But that skin of truth was stretched overly tightly around a lie of enormous proportions. The lie was the impression left by the question that the attack was an unplanned event isolated in time to the evening when it occurred. One has the sense, from hearing her words, that she is suggesting that a group of radicals were strolling in the park and decided
What difference, at this point, does it make?
It makes the difference that the President and his administration -- in a planned act of direct lies -- told America that the attack on Benghazi was the fault of a video. They knew when they said it that they were lying. Why say it? Because they knew the alternative, truthful, explanation was damning to the President's re-election: a more general failure of policy in the region. Now one of the principal architects of that falsehood, an agent of deception that used flourish and art to spin out two further developed and completely false narratives, would be President.
No, it wasn't a group out for a walk that spontaneously decided to kill Americans.
No, it wasn't a protest against a video that simply spun out of control.
The two previous IED attacks directly on the compound, including one that blew a hole in the compound's fence large enough for forty men to charge through, show that there was deliberation, planning, probing for weaknesses in security taking place in the months leading up to the attack. The Gaddafi regime that Obama toppled was, certainly, troubling. The wreck left in the wake of topping that regime, however, was the failure of Obama's policy. A person of honor would have resigned their post rather than assist in propping up Obama's policy and his lies to the American people. We have seen American political leaders demonstrate that honor.
During the investigation into the break-in of the Democratic Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, then-President Richard Nixon gave in to pressure and appointed an independent special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. When Cox's investigation discomfitted Nixon, he decided to fire him.
The decision of the President to terminate an official of his administration is nothing new. In our history we had episodic fits between Congress and the President over that power. Ultimately, Congress enacted a law, the Tenure in Office Act, during the administration of Pres. Andrew Johnson.
In 1867, having grown wary with Edwin Stanton's service as secretary of war, Pres. Johnson wrote a telegram to Sec. Stanton advised him that his resignation from office would be accepted. Stanton did not respond and continue to exercise the powers of his office as secretary of war. Stanton, part of the radical Republican wing of the Republican Party, and others believe that Johnson's policies of reconstruction were insufficiently rigorous and disciplinary of a South which had fought against the union. Ultimately, Pres. Johnson ordered Sec. Stanton to suspend the exercise of his office and appointed Ulysses Grant to service Secretary of War in his place.
In response to the president's actions, Congress enacted the Tenure in Office Act over Johnson's veto. The act prohibited the president from discharging any government official whose appointment required the advice and consent of the Senate, without obtaining the consent of the Senate to the discharge. Because Johnson's discharge of Stanton violated the act, the House of Representatives impeached Johnson. Although this Senate failed to convict Johnson it was the first time in our nations history that a president was subjected to a trial for impeachment.
A century later, Pres. Nixon, embattled in the White House over the Watergate break-in, face the rigorous investigation by special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Nixon concluded that Cox should be fired. He directed the Atty. Gen. of the United States, Elliot Richardson, to fire Archibald Cox. Richardson refused.
Rather than fire Cox, Richardson resigned. Nixon then ordered the Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Like Richardson, Ruckelshaus refused. He resigned his office.
In the absence of an Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General, the solicitor General of the United States is the acting head of the Department of Justice. At that time Robert Bork was the Solicitor General of the United States. Nixon requested that Bork terminate Archibald Cox has special prosecutor. Bork terminated Cox, in his view the president had the sole prerogative to terminate from employment with the federal government any employee.
Richardson and Ruckelshaus set a clear precedent for a person holding high public office under the government of the United States to resign from office rather than to participate in folly or crime. Clinton, who served as an attorney to the Watergate committee investigating Nixon, knew that Richardson and Ruckelshaus acted honorably in the face of Nixon's demand for the firing of Archibald Cox. Apparently that lesson of history was lost on Secretary Clinton. Hillary Clinton chose poorly.
Instead, Hillary shared in the lying, and offered her own falsehoods. Your decision to support her candidacy grants her your post-hoc absolution, your license to conduct herself in future offices as she did as Secretary: lying to you, to the American people, and to the world, and doing so solely on the ground that the ends -- the re-election of the President free from doubts that his failed policy created the Benghazi bloodbath -- justified the means.
That got your attention, so let me start by clarifying something.
Women don't get raped because they wear skimpy clothing. They get raped because someone else breaks the law, disrespects the integrity and humanity of another, and commits a despicable act of violation.
That being said, this administration likes to blame the short skirted woman for being raped.
More specifically, this administration likes to blame Ambassador Chris Stevens for his own violent murder in Benghazi.
Allow me to explain.
Do you remember the recent brouhaha over Ben Carson's reaction to the shooting at Umpuqua Community College. He said, in that position, he would have attacked and urged others to join in the attack, because "he might get me, but he can't get us all." In essence, the talking heads made this out to be Carson blaming the victims for getting shot.
Some follow up in conservative media noted that the disarmament of Jews left them unable to defend themselves against the Nazis. Again, this remark was criticized for its supposed blaming of the victims.
Well, children, here's a bit of information for you. It's about your current president, the most recent previous Secretary of State, and their decision to BLAME AMBASSADOR STEVENS for his gruesome death in Libya.
You didn't hear in the media about that attack on Ambassador Stevens by the Administration?
See that last sentence, "Embassy Tripoli did not demonstrate strong and sustained advocacy with Washington for increased security for Special Mission Benghazi." Among sentences that could be written about the attack in Benghazi and the losses incurred, there is the one produced by this administration that indicts Obama and Clinton for playing the "blame the victim" card.
The key difference --when this progressive train wreck of an administration engages in this kind of deliberate attempt to blame shift onto the dead, as opposed to when Ben Carson simply explains what he would do differently in the same circumstances as those recently killed at Umpuqua -- is that the Lap Dance Media is too busy gussying itself up for the White House Correspondents Dinner, or checking the mail for the much vaunted White House Christmas Party invitation to do the job that real muckrakers of journalism once did.
At the end of this administration, when the trash is being cleared, I fully they will find one journal on the shelves of the Oval Office. It will be styled, "Things I Took Responsibility For." When they open the pages, they will, of course, be blank.
Not a murdered one, stabbed through its Senate by a rising Empire, as in Rome. Not one ravaged by the depredations of wars, external or internal. Just one that stopped caring passionately about its continuation. One that simply concluded that frames, forms, boundaries and limits on governmental reach were meaningless, often unhelpful to personal interests, and able to be ignored without cost.
How bizarrely we think!
We look long back at Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and see their slaves. We look long back at Franklin, Adams, Gerry, and see their toleration of slavery.
We entirely miss their genius exhibited by framing a system in which those who held slaves, even ones who saw their own acts as immoral, and those who found slavery reprehensible, could toil together toward their common LIBERATION FROM TYRANNY.
Now we only see the undeniable injustice of the slavery. Now we only see the true complicity of the agreement.
We do not see the risk they took. We do not see the sacrifices they made. We do not see the labor of their lifetimes.
We simply deny the existence of giants on whose shoulders this Nation has stood. Worse, we have undertaken an assault and battery on them, hammering and chiseling away at the very shoulders on which we stand.
What we deny seeing is that these injustices and that complicity were, not are. They are in the past. While wrongs assuredly echo into the generations, our Nation has paid, is paying, the piper for the tune those gentlemen danced.
But, we should also see this:
Every descendant of slaves born today in this Nation lives, by comparison with his cousins, both those distant in time and those distant in geography, in a most kingly fashion. Yes, even when such descendants live in government housing, eating government cheese, attending government schools, getting health care through a government plan, they are living like kings compared to children that walk an hour each way to collect filthy water, that would relish the moments on the bus, in the classroom, and in the Section 8 housing provided to them.
That is not to say that we should be contented that we have achieved a national level of affluence sufficient to afford charitable care for millions. Instead, we should be in the business of getting out of the way of liberty, out of the way of private economic arrangements that grow opportunity for all.
But, this posting is not so much about that, as it is about the sometimes terrible fear I have that those to whom we entrust the instruments of government, and we who repose those trust, alike, no longer see harm in liberties lost, in mounding up the powers of government.
Winks and blinks, I fear, will be the death of our Republic.
Winks, of course, signify an agreement.
You've seen this time and again, perhaps beginning with your parents' shared winks when one of them confirmed that the tooth fairy left you the quarter under your pillow, or that Santa had eaten the cookies you left for him.
In the enterprise of liberty, one of the important, but not original, features of the frameworks of both our State and federal governments is the division of power between branches. We have Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches. Each has powers and responsibilities, and these are different in character and relevant to their sphere of responsibility.
We know that the Legislature -- in your State and in Washington, DC -- make laws, the Governor and the President enforce laws, and the Judiciary judges the enforcement of criminal laws and hear civil cases between parties. That is the design as crafted in State Constitutions and in the federal one.
Yet, the winks never end.
For example, Congress enacts laws to regulate the safety of foods. Yet, because an exhaustive statute law to cover the topic would consume many thousands of pages, Congress creates an agency, the Food and Drug Administration. It grants discretionary power to the agency, by rules and regulations to fill out the blanks if the Food law. It winks, if you will, at an Executive agency engaged in making law.
Here's a good example of the results of ignoring that boundary line.
The photo to the left shows a printed copy of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). It passed Congress at a substantial girth of just over 2000 pages. It seems like a substantial law, doesn't it? And given its length, who can blame Nancy Pelosi for not reading the law, and who can blame Barack Obama for making promises without reading the law.
Yet.
As huge as that law is, it is an infant, a mere bagatelle, by comparison with the body of regulations that have been generated by the several agencies involved with implementing the Obamacare law. Agencies including the
Department of Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service of the Treasury Department, the Food and Drug Administration, and others all have RULE-MAKING ROLES under Obamacare.
When the rules and regulations adopted to implement Obamacare are stacked together, the stunning multiplication threatens the record when Jesus fed the five thousand with just a few loaves and fishes. The picture on the right shows the regulations enacted by the agencies.
But, wait, there is more.
An agency like the FDA, it is charged with enforcing the law. Typically, law enforcement consists of a government actor examining private conduct to determine whether that conduct comports with requirements of law. If the conduct does not comport with law, the law enforcement agent or agency brings the individual or organization into a court, either by suing them, or by filing a criminal charge. The application of the law to the facts -- determining if the government actor correctly concluded that the conduct was unlawful -- is done by the judiciary. Yet, with winks from both the judiciary and the legislature, federal agencies (and many State ones) conduct quasi-judicial proceedings.
The incessant winking of the branches has produced, particularly at the federal level, but also in many States, a bricolage of powers and responsibilities shared among branches, rather than particular, even peculiar, to each. That circumstance leave a beleaguered populace confused, disoriented and uncertain whether the collapse of their liberties results from real wrongs, trespassory actions of judges acting like legislatures, executive agencies acting like judges and legislatures, and legislatures not wanting to bear full faith and allegiance to the Constitution by performing their jobs and stopping overreaches by the remaining branches.
And that brings us to the blinking.
Blinking, on the other hand, signals surrender.
That notion is captured in an Ad Age article about the cola wars.
In the constitutional framework, there are balancing mechanisms that are essential to keep the powers of the federal government divided. In The Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton explains it this way:
So, the President "holds the sword." Do not confuse that as a reference to the President's role as Commander in Chief. It is a direct reference to the Letter of Paul to the Romans, where Paul remarked that "magistrate beareth not the sword in vain." The sword that the President bears is the sword of enforcement, of punishment.
And the Congress both makes the laws by which we live, but prescribes the structure of taxes and expenditures by the government. Elsewhere the authors of the Federalists explain (and the secret notes of the Constitutional Convention reflect this thinking) that the power to tax and the power to make laws were placed in the local electorate because it maintains that intimacy of connection between those that legislate and those upon whom the burden of legislation is laid.
The Judiciary lacks the force of the Executive, with its powers of arrest and prosecution, and it lacks the will of the Legislative, with its power to make laws, assess taxes, and order expenditures. The Judiciary has only judgment.
Take all three of these powers. Consolidate them in a man. You will call that man, Majesty, Highness, Chairman, Fuhrer. What you call him, no matter what it is, will mean, in fact, tyrant. That conjoined triplet of tyranny is the fearful monster the Framers of the Constitution sought to avert every arising in this new Nation. That is the reason for the Separation of Powers.
But, there is more than separated functions for these separated branches to the security of our liberty.
Particularly in the Congress, there is an insurmountable power that makes the Legislature more powerful than either of the remaining branches: the power to impeach and remove constitutional officers, including Presidents, cabinet officials, Supreme Court justices and federal judges.
Hold on, Jim, did you just say that the Congress is MORE POWERFUL than either the President or the Judiciary?
Yes, in fact, I did.
Because of the power to impeach and remove officers of the government, Congress holds the winning card in EVERY HAND. The Constitution simply does not admit of an equally effective weapon for the use of either the President or the Courts. True, we read about individual Congressmen being arrested on corruption charges. Also true, we read about judges from time to time that issue injunctions against government programs (Judge Andrew Hanen in Texas, who enjoined the DAPA deferral program of the Obama administration comes to mind). But, in the main, these powers of the Executive and the Judiciary do not arch over, or overmatch, the Congress.
So, in a system in which the power of the Congress PREDOMINATES over the Presidency and the Judiciary, how do we come to the point where now we are?
By the blinking surrender.
Here's an example. In 2013, the Congress and President Obama could not come to agreement on funding legislation for the federal government. Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, Democrats controlled the Senate. House Republicans came to power in 2010, in a nationwide revulsion to various aspects of Obamacare, including its provisions and the process that led to its enactment.
Throughout 2013, TEA Party activists, fiscal conservative Republicans, and others had engaged the public in an effort to build support for a Congressional solution to the problematic and controversial legislation. Ultimately, House Republicans prepared spending measures that left Obamacare functions unfunded; Senate Democrats had their own proposal that funded the law's enforcement and implementation. Unable to reach agreement, the end of September, 2013, spending authorization for discretionary government functions expired.
On the Republican side, however, commitment to a shut down of the government -- previously accepted as a reasonable action to prevail on the issue of Obamacare -- wavered. Moderate Republican Senator Lamar Alexander worked out a funding solution with Senator Chuck Schumer. Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed to the legislation. That proposal did not defund Obamacare (the original proposal from the House). That proposal did not delay implementation of Obamacare for a year (a second proposal from the House). The Republicans, in a word, blinked.
The blinking goes beyond budget battles related to Obamacare. And it is not limited to Congressional blinking.
Now, in the end of things, the blinking on discrete policy issues is just part of politics, the give and take of compromise in a heterogeneous population.
Blinking on the boundaries of constitutional power and duty, however, presents grave risk of harm. The balance of powers depends not only on each department of the government restraining itself to its granted powers, but on each department, to the extent it lies within its granted powers to do so, to check excesses in the others. Impeaching the justices of the Supreme Court would check an excess in which they began to usurp, for example, the presidential power to command the military forces of the United States. Prosecuting a Senator because her votes were corrupted by benefits offered to her by an interested party -- for taking a bribe -- would check that Senator.
But when none of the departments of the government asserts and employs its power to check excesses of the other branches, a disrespect for the entire framework becomes unavoidable.
President Obama says that he will conclude an international agreement with Iran regarding sanctions that have been in place for twenty-five years, sanctions targeting the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism. Moreover, Obama says he will do so without agreement thereto by the Senate. Now, Obama's position has been defended, by Secretary of State Kerry, for example, on the ground that the agreement to be reached is not a "treaty" as that term is used in the Constitution. The Constitution, of course, requires that treaties negotiated by the President depend the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate.
In response to Obama's disregard of the Senate's constitutional role, will we see yet another blinking Congress? Will Congress fail to restrict the budget of the Executive Branch as a discipline for Obama's defiance? Will Congress fail to call the Secretary of State to account in hearings on all aspects of the "agreement?" Will Congress fail to show the resolve embodied in the decision to impeach the President, the Secretary of State, and other complicit officers of the United States?
We already know the answers to these questions are yes, yes, yes, and yes.
Buckingham Palace is home to some famous folks. In particular, England's Monarch, Queen Elizabeth spends time there. Sometimes, as here, she spends that time waving to her loyal subjects. We've seen so many photos of this sort: the young Queen, the Queen with her young children, the Queen with her adult children and their spouses, and then with grandchildren.
Perhaps Clinton thought drones were, well, the size the balsa wood gliders we liked to throw as kids? Here's a drone on the tarmac in Italy, ready to take flight. The serviceman on the tarmac in front of it gives you some perspective on size. Depending on the particular mission and drone, these may be equipped with Hellfire Missiles or other ordinance.
