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Bombing at Fox News

I recall a TV interview from years ago where a child-rearing professional said he witnessed
reckless innocence and ignorance in action in his own living room, albeit with two animals.
(Let’s put aside for now the possibility that animals can be regarded with the labels innocent
or ignorant.) The drama played out like this: his family’s pet hamster was trying to climb out
of its cage, but little did the hamster know that across the living room, crouching around the
corner of the couch and poised to pounce was the family cat. The professional used this
example to warn parents to make sure their children stayed within the loving “cage” of their
parents’ rules, lest they get harmed by negative influences and experiences.

A recent discussion between Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade and Fox’s legal eagle Peter
Johnson brought this hamster-cat example to mind. In this discussion, which focused
on the “mirandizing” of the surviving Boston bombing suspect, Kilmeade joins league
with the hamster when he climbs out of the Constitution/Bill of Rights cage (actually,
like all statist neoconservatives, he climbs in and out of that cage depending on which of
their oxen is being gored) and expresses his dismay with the fact that an American citizen who most
likely will be found guilty of a horrendous act of terror, will have at his disposal the option
available to all Americans—even the nastiest–to remain silent.

Kilmeade goes on to answer Johnson’s statement that “we’re a nation of laws” with this
zinger: “We are a nation to stay alive.” Johnson also states that “Either we believe in the
Constitution or we don’t believe in the Constitution.” To this Kilmeade—not yet done with
great retorts—puts Johnson in his place with “Not everyone is worthy of the constitutional
rights that we have.” Wow! This comment could easily come from the mouth of any banana
republic dictator. Johnson adds that Senator Graham wants to “suspend civil rights and
constitutional law” (in cases like this). To this, Kilmeade adds: “For public safety.”

I don’t think that Hamster Kilmeade realizes what this kind of thinking can lead to. Johnson
tries to warn him that it could be him or his family who could be in jeopardy under this sort
of exemption. Kilmeade puts that silly notion to rest by saying that he is “not blowing up the
subway.” Take that, Johnson. Johnson, however, is hardly off the hook, for he contradicts
himself by saying that “I didn’t say end the public safety exemption.” So, basically, in
this interview, he is little more than the Devil’s advocate. What else can you expect from
“conservative” Fox News?

Yes, let’s have a “public safety exemption.” That worked well for the thousands of Japanese
who were interned in camps during World War Two. Let’s deny an entire race of people the
Constitutional right to own firearms because of “public safety” as well.

I can understand the frustration of law-enforcement personnel who feel hamstrung by an
inability to gather intelligence from a mute suspect. (My eldest son is a cop.) However,

we see on an everyday basis the actions of a tyrannical government that has turned the
practice of skirting the Constitution into a decadent art.

So Brian—and you, too, Peter—my advice to you both is to climb back into that cage
called the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and stay there. I know that the word cage sounds
negative and limiting, but Jefferson himself said: “In questions of power…let no more
be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the
Constitution.” Benjamin Franklin also warned that those who would sacrifice their liberty
for safety would end up with neither. So chains or cage, Brian and Peter. Take your pick.
The Constitution is there for your own protection. Trust me, but more importantly trust the
Founding Fathers.

Apr 29, 2013 | Categories:Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

My Lost Causes in D.C.

When I was a child I would sometimes hear someone say: “Pray to St. Jude.” [the patron saint of lost causes] when the subject came up about some perceived lost cause or another.

I have a few lost causes to add to that neverending prayer list: my state of Iowa’s elected officials in Washington. (Most of Iowa’s own state legislators and senators are another story, for another time.) What prompted my recent dismay was a short article that appeared in my local paper. This news note stated that Senator Charles Grassley was “…glad the Obama Administration came to its senses.” Ol’ Chuck’s gladness was in reference to the Labor Department’s decision to withdraw its regulations that would have placed strict restrictions on teenage and younger people working on family farms.

Now, you would think that I would be glad that Chuck was glad. Well, maybe I would have been a few years ago, but not now. Blame the Tenth Amendment Center for that. Anyway, piqued by Chuck’s response on this issue, I searched the Web site of the other Iowa Senator, Tom (too good for Iowa) Harkin, and heard…crickets chirping.

Surely my Congressman, Bruce Braley, must have something to say on this issue. Nope. More cricket action. I couldn’t believe it. You’d think that he and Tom would be glad–just like Chuck–since they represent a lot of farmers.

I don’t know about Tom and Bruce, but it’s highly unlikely that they tote around a copy of the Constitution like I’ve heard Chuck does. Good for them! They would be even bigger hypocrites if they did. Back to Chuck. Being a “constitutionalist,” he should not be “glad” that the Department of Labor withdrew its young working farmer regulation. Why? Because his gladness is pathetic. He sounds like he’s grabbing his master’s hands and kissing them, happy that his master has acquiesced to something that Chuck feels strongly about.

What Chuck and all his federal bretheren should actually be doing is actively shutting down the DOL (defunding works) as well as the other alphabet soup of unconstitutional departments and agencies. I won’t give them a list. All they need do is consult the Constitution–specifically Article 1, Section 8–and start striking out the interlopers.

Since I’m not going to hold my breath that my elected federal representatives will actually honor their oaths to the Constitution, I’ll just keep concentrating on my state’s elected officials to push back against a bloated, power-mad federal government. There’s hope at the state level as evidenced by victories against the fed in other states.

One can continue to pray for lost causes–especially the trio I’ve mentioned–but there are 50 causes that aren’t lost. They, and the power they wield, have been rediscovered thanks largely to the Tenth Amendment Center.

 

 

May 10, 2012 | Categories:Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

What If the Founding Fathers Win–Again?

Ian Millhiser, writing for the Center for American Progress, poses an interesting question: “What if the Tea Party wins?”

It turns out that this question is the only interesting thing among the standard progressive boilerplate served up by Mr. Millhiser. I know I shouldn’t waste my time in responding, as these alarms pop up from progressives like so many prairie dogs across the landscape, but, to be honest, it’s too much fun to avoid.

First, setting that bothersome Constitution aside for now, let’s address those terrible things that Millhiser is confident will happen if the Tea Party “wins.” “Rotting meat,” “sub-minimum wage jobs,” “higher education” as a “luxury,” “Medicaid,” –the list is endless in the eyes of the fed worshippers. But I won’t address these items too much individually, but rather as a batch, which can be addressed by the fifty states—in their own way. Everything on his list of wonderful things performed by the federal government in a sloppy, wasteful, and heavy handed manner can be done at the state level, as long as the states’ residents actually want them. It would be up to them to craft and implement the programs, but they would have control and they would have to watch spending because their respective state would actually be operating under a true, honest budget where they would be unable to print money out of thin air to enable further, reckless spending on programs that they can’t afford. And future generations wouldn’t be saddled with crushing debt.

Millhiser claims that the Tea Party wants to “reimagine the Constitution as an anti-government manifesto.” (Speaking of “manifesto,” what has been done to our Republic must have been inspired by another manifesto.) Really? “Reimagine”? (John Lennon could have changed the title of his song, if he’d been more creative.) I have been to Tea Party meetings and events and I hear no such talk about reimagining the Constitution. The opposite is actually true, as most, if not all Tea Partiers are pretty devoted to restoring the Constitution as it was written and intended by the Founding Fathers.

Millhiser refers to “tentherism” as that dastardly practice of reading Constitutional powers “too narrowly.” Imagine that? The powers of the federal government are enumerated and constitutionalists or Tea Partiers want the federal government to honor those enumerated powers, and they are the ones with the problem?

And oh, did you know that the Congress can empower the “federal government to levy taxes and leverage these revenues for programs such as Social Security and Medicare”? Now who’s doing the “reimagining”? So, the very act of levying taxes automatically empowers Congress to create programs outside of the enumerated powers, according to our scholar, Mr. Millhiser.

Millhiser also comments on how impractical it would be if states ran their own versions of Social Security because of people moving from state to state. To that I simply say: then don’t bother with those government-sponsored “retirement” programs at all. There is a clean and simple option and one that was widely used before the advent of Social Security: self-directed retirement savings and it doesn’t matter what state you move to and you do not have to jump through legalistic hoops to implement it. It works this way: you earn money and then you save it in a bank, under your mattress, or wherever you want and nobody needs to know because its nobody’s business but yours because you earned the money and this is a free country.

Our scholar also lists all the problems that would occur “If a cow is raised in Texas, slaughtered in Oklahoma, and then sold as steaks in New York.” But his angst only underscores what Tea Partiers and “tenthers” are rebelling against, and that is too much regulation, too many taxes, and too many government-imposed roadblocks that people have to contend with on a daily basis. I’ve read books about the “old days” when people ate steaks that did not have to pass the modern bureaucratic muster and the people didn’t die in the streets, as Millhiser would have you believe. We’re seeing this federal government heavy handedness on display against Amish and others who only want to sell their whole, raw milk to others who want to drink whole, raw milk, which, incidentally, is healthier than the substitute that passes as milk on stores’ “dairy” shelves. Thanks, FDA and the Agriculture Department!

Millhiser goes on with his litany of other terrible things that, you know, would happen without a strong, overreaching, and benevolent federal government there to protect us. But he conveniently leaves out the wars that the federal government has gotten us into, starting with the Civil War with its 600,000-plus lives lost, not over slavery, which was on its way out anyway, but because of greed, power lust, and government corruption. Then there are the small wars, World War I (and some would argue parts of WWII), the Korean and Vietnam wars, the seemingly endless “War on Terror.” All told, millions of lives lost not because of states being belligerent, but because of power-mad politicians at the federal level—the same level that protected the institution of slavery. Then there are the amazing Supreme Court rulings such as Roe v. Wade. But hey, we got our food safety, Social Security, and Pell grants in return didn’t we? What a steal!

Millhiser also takes on the “unconstitutional doctrine” of nullification, as he puts it, by citing the supremacy clause, which, in his mind, would empower Congress to do pretty much anything it wanted to do. But, Mr. Millhiser might reply: “Well, there would be some limits to the power that Congress could wield. After all they’re not dictators.” To which I would reply: Oh, and where might those limits be found? It wouldn’t be Article 1, Section 8, would it? The supremacy and welfare clauses are happily hamstrung by the enumerated powers entrusted to the federal government. He also states that “This doctrine [nullification] is not simply unconstitutional [tell that to Jefferson and Madison, authors of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolves, which stated that nullification was the “rightful remedy” to federal incursions into states’ rights], it is a direct attack on the idea that we are the United States of America.” Well, let’s all just trash our state constitutions and forget that we were the creators of the federal government and entrusted it with limited duties and that it was to do our bidding and not lord over us like the English. But hey, being “united” under despotism is the right thing to do.

Thuggery, power, greed, mismanagement, and waste exist in spades at the federal level.
These problems can all be better addressed at the state level. A high school student could tell you that. But that’s been the problem all along, hasn’t it? The Constitution has been pushed aside, and millions have paid a dear price for it. And obfuscating statists like Mr. Millhiser have been accomplices to this mockery of our rich heritage of liberty and those who sacrificed so much to bring it to fruition.

Will the Tea Party Win? The more appropriate question is: Will the Founding Fathers win–again?

Sep 17, 2011 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Reality Check for the Commerce Clause

MISSOULA, Mont.—“With a homemade .22-caliber rifle he calls the Montana Buckaroo, Gary Marbut dreams of taking down the federal regulatory state.
Montana passed a law that tries to exempt the state from federal gun regulation. But the law is now before the courts, in a test of states’ rights. WSJ’s Jess Bravin reports.

He’s not planning to fire his gun. Instead, he wants to sell it, free from federal laws requiring him to record transactions, pay license fees and open his business to government inspectors.

For years, Mr. Marbut argued that a wide range of federal laws, not just gun regulations, should be invalid because they were based on an erroneous interpretation of Congress’s constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. In his corner were a handful of conservative lawyers and academics. Now, with the rise of the tea-party movement, the self-employed shooting-range supplier finds himself leading a movement.

Ten state attorneys general, dozens of elected officials and an array of conservative groups are backing the legal challenge he engineered to get his constitutional theory before the Supreme Court. A federal appeals court in San Francisco is now considering his case.“

Read the rest here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304584404576442440490097046.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop

Gary Marbut has a colossal fight on his hands, but it is one I believe he can win. To me the issue lies not in the word “commerce,” but in the word “regulate.” Wikipedia, in its coverage of the commerce clause, is overly concerned with the definition and application of the word “commerce.” (Let’s put aside for now the common-sense definition of the word commerce as pertaining to economic activity only.) In doing so, they (as with many courts in the past) are focusing on the wrong word. The key word in the clause is “regulate.”

The word regulate, for some time before, during, and after the drafting of the Constitution, simply meant to make regular. In the context of the commerce clause and its application “among the states,” this meant to keep the process of economic exchange between states moving along smoothly and fairly, with no state hindering the receipt or transmittal of goods into or out of its borders. This did not mean that the federal government could regulate how a product was made within a state, nor could it micromanage how it was transmitted to another state(s). As Tom Woods points out in “Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, “ “This is the sense in which the Second Amendment’s ‘well-regulated militia’ is to be understood, for example.” After all, the word “regulate” held the same meaning across the amendments. Imagine if the Second Amendment allowed for the federal government’s micromanaging of the militia. What would be the point of the amendment? What good would a militia be to a free people if the central government controlled it as much as it tries to control interstate economic activity? A militia would be pointless in that case, and may as well be merged with the federal government’s army. Then where would that leave the people should the federal government turn on them?

Yes, Mr. Marbut’s got a fight on his hands, but he does have a lot of guns at his disposal in the form of his own state government, tea party activists, and, of course, the Tenth Amendment Center. We’ve got his back and we wish him success.

Jul 18, 2011 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave A Comment »

The States–The Republic's Ace in the Hole

Over 235 years ago, this great land and its people were given the greatest earthly gift that had ever been seen or experienced before–the gift of this Republic as it was founded. This gift was based on the collective wisdom of mankind from the ancients to 18th-century political and economic thought. Our founding fathers, in their wisdom, stated that rights were not granted from man to man, or government to man, but were God-given and were thus inalienable. Also in the construction of our Republic were clearly defined roles for the federal government, as enumerated in the Constitution. What was not included in the enumerated powers was left to the states, the grantors of the fed’s powers. So the federal government, a creature of the several states, was presented with its orders as well as its guidelines. The founders were not fools, though, and could see that man would not respect the Constitution’s limitations and would, through outright greed, incompetence, or–the most common affliction–delusions of grandeur (robbing from Peter to pay Paul–a la Karl Marx–thereby posing as someone who “cares” for the “little guy”) violate the Constitution’s precepts. Enter the 10th Amendment (the states) as the peoples’ ace in the hole. What we are seeing across this great land in recent times is the states reasserting their rights to hold the federal government in check and to protect their inhabitants from federal violations of their rights. The states and the American people have always had this ace in the hole, but thanks to efforts of the Tenth Amendment center and other organization, as well as Tea Party activists, the people have found out that they hold the winning hand because they have the rule of law–the U.S. Constitution and specifically the Tenth Amendment–on their side. It’s time for the federal overreachers to cash in their chips.

Feb 21, 2011 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave A Comment »

The Big Laws

Joe Blow down the street doesn’t pay his taxes and he gets fined. Tim Geithner (or pick from an array of politicians or bureaucrats)
doesn’t pay his taxes and he becomes the U.S. Treasury Secretary. Get it? If you’re an Ivy Leaguer (preferably Harvard or Yale), and if you have the right connections, as Obama’s mother had with Geithner’s father, and
if you are a politician or high-ranking bureaucrat on the federal level,
you can often operate above the law, with little or no fear of being prosecuted,
much less fined, even if you get caught. You can skirt not only the little laws that everyone else has to obey, but also the big laws, as spelled out in the Constitution..
But for lowly Joe Blow, ignorance is no excuse.

Mush Mouths
Over the decades, the politician/educator class has succeeded in turning the Constitution into a pile of mush and has fed this mush to dumbed-down aides and students who eat this mush and regurgitate it down the line to their unsuspecting minions. It is much easier to be lazy and pass yourself off as being charitable (at others’ expense, of course) than it is to be disciplined with your own mind, other’s money, and the big laws.

Where Is Law Enforcement of the Big Laws?
It is amazing that the FBI, U.S. Marshalls, and Secret Service go after those who sell drugs and counterfeit our currency, but somehow, when politicians pass “laws” that ignore or circumvent the enumerated powers allotted to the federal government under the Constitution, nothing happens. So, when politicians violate the big laws, they
don’t even get a call from the FBI, U.S. Marshalls, or the Secret Service.
And why not? Do we have to wait for someone to bring suit, as is the case with some attorneys general and hope our beloved Supremes rule in favor of upholding the Constitution? What should really happen is that Congress would police itself and, failing that, the federal police would swoop in and arrest anyone on the House floor who dared pass unconstitutional legislation. Sound far fetched? Naïve? Impossible? Sure, based on past experience, but the little laws are pretty clear and ignorance of them is no excuse. The big laws are also pretty clear and ignorance of them can be no excuse for violating them as well. Break out the handcuffs. Then break out the champagne.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.– Edmund Burke

Aug 04, 2010 | Categories:Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

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Jul 05, 2010 | Categories:Uncategorized | 1 Comment »