Obama vs Madison: how the US constitution infringes upon Barak Obama’s authority

 This is the complete post started last time

“Change is…… hard it takes longer than….. we would……like”   often we have heard these words from President Obama. Mr. President, don’t be so modest, you have wrought an incredible amount of change to the USA in three short years, all the while you must be silently cursing James Madison and the others for putting all those limits on your power via the Constitution. If you had not completely disregarded it on almost every issue I can’t imagine where we would be, but I will try.

If you hadn’t chosen to ignore section I of the 14^th amendment Federal election laws would still protect every citizen not just those of specific color. If you recall the Black Panthers were caught on video intimidating voters in Philly in 2008. Attorney General Eric Holder decided not to pursue charges against the Black Panthers (who endorsed his boss in ’08)  when asked why an open and shut case was ignored Holder said,
“When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia—which was inappropriate, certainly that…to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people,”. http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/03/well-the-who-he.html

So unless I read this wrong, since you white folk never suffered like my people suffered (yet anyway) the laws don’t apply to you. This is blatant racism and utter disregard for the rule of law. This is morally equivalent to the conduct of southern Democrats that necessitated voter protection laws in the first place. Thank you Mr President, by ignoring the constitution you have brought wholesale racial discrimination back into law. While we’re thinking of AG Holder and your administration’s lawlessness…

“The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution”,   this is the beginning of Article III section 2 of the constitution dealing with the authority of the Federal Court. In 1996 a republican legistature passed a law signed by a Democratic president which said in part: Section 2. Powers reserved to the states

No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.

Section 3. Definition of marriage

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.

While this law is supported by conservatives and people of faith by and an overwhelming majority of the citizenry, you Barrack Obama along with Eric Holder have declared it unconstitutional and refuse to defend it in court. I have just read the second and third articles of the constitution and at no point does the power of judicial review fall to the executive branch. Fortunately, Mr. President a little thing like the separation of powers isn’t going to stop you! How else can you subvert the will of the people to achieve a chosen political goal? The executive has no more power to deem a law unconstitutional than it does to make a law, which brings us to…

The EPA. The Environmental Protection Agency may not be constitutional at all, there is at least a legitimate argument against it, but for the sake of argument and only for the sake of argument let’s concede that it does have a right to exist. In fact I don’t even want to argue at this time what the EPA should do even if it can constitutionally exist; I just want to consider how your administration uses the EPA to get around the constitutional limits of executive power. This won’t even begin to cover the abuses of the constitution by the EPA for a longer list here is an awesome article from Rand Paul, http://paul.senate.gov/?p=blog&id=301. The EPA is your tool to shut down coal powered plants, to regulate farmers and ranchers out of existence, to bankrupt independent truckers, to nix oil and natural gas production and to make private property irrelevant, but what I am impressed with is how cleverly you use it to legislate. Under your guidance the EPA has accelerated the implementation of CAFÉ standards, Cooperate Average Fuel Efficiency, even though legislatively the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is tasked with oversight. All the EPA is to do is measure vehicle efficiency. CAFÉ is a bad law ever since it was signed in 1975, Gerald Ford was president then, the destruction of America has been bipartisan at times, but it is the law, companies may choose to comply early but the government can’t simply decide to enforce them early, at least legally that is.

You have also brilliantly began to use the EPA to begin to institute cap and trade even thought the American people wouldn’t hear of it and you couldn’t even get it passed through super majorities of both houses. A lesser president would have stopped at that, tried to promote the idea get support convince people that the only way to save the earth from global warming is to give the government complete control over how much energy we can use. Of course that’s hard to do when the whole idea of global warming is a hoax and has been proven so. Its ironic is it not, poor old George Washington had the opportunity to be king, and flatly refused, but you sir in your wisdom see that people need to be guided and helped along, they need a president whose words carry the full weight of royal decrees, and that begs the subject….

Executive orders. Executive orders are not laws, and should not constitutionally have the power of law. This controversy predates your administration by a lot the earliest presidents used executive orders like office memoranda to deal with details of administrative functions or to set forth a modus operendi on how best to implement such  acts of Congress as would be necessary. The Dream Act fails in congress, no worries we will implement it through executive order, never mind that it defies existing law. Like wise with card check and the disclose act. In fact law making or legislating are given over entirely to congress, period. A president who disregards this is not a constitutional president but rather a despot, putting cronies in important positions and ignoring the advise and consent duty of congress, which brings us to…

Presidential appointments.   First of all I cannot help but suspect that the appointment of more czars than had the Romanoff’s is outside the intent of the constitution. Powerful positions with no congressional approval and little oversight, commanding great stores of public resource and helping shape policy is likely not what the founders had in mind. Other Presidents have used the term czar but you sir, make it an art form giving unconstitutional appointments the power to do unconstitutional things! Brilliant! Then there are the recess appointments. It may be that it is time to reassess the recess appointment clause. When it was in place congress was in recess for much longer periods and should an important official be unable to continue his service the President would need the ability to put a temporary replacement in place. Now this power is used more as a tool of circumvention similar to the way Pres. Bush put John Bolton in place. In the past presidents have always made sure of one thing; that congress was in recess. You however have taken upon yourself the Orwellian ability to look at the congress as they debate issues and vote on legislation and say, “they are in recess” as you wave your hand like a Jedi master over a weak minded population of saps. As impossible as it seems, it appears to be working, the outcry from the most blatant lie possible has been limited.

You wish to change America, circumventing the constitution has allowed you to go farther than nearly all your predecessors combined. You would make King George blush with your advances.

Of course my admiration is facetious.  I rather like America the way it is, with the good ole slow process of creating change, fixing our problems the hard way and taking care of our self and our own. What can be done? At times the Republicans are unable to stop you at others they are too weak, but you forget one thing, it was not Republicans or Democrats that instituted this mighty constitution, it was “We the People of the United States”. You will finish what you started over our dead bodies. More and more of us are waking up and realizing this is our hour, our rendezvous with destiny. We are going to win.

I’ll tell you why I believe that next time, until then keep on the firing line!

The strength and fragility of the US Constitution

• “There is no justification for public interference with purely private concerns.”
• “The property of the people belongs to the people. To take it from them by taxation cannot be justified except by urgent public necessity. Unless this principle be recognized, our country is no longer secure, our people no longer free.”
• “I want the people of America to be able to work less for the Government and more for themselves. I want them to have rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can re-establish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very distinct curtailment of our liberty.”
• “No matter what any one may say about making the rich and the corporations pay the taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil. It is your fellow workers who are ordered to work for the Government every time an appropriation bill is passed.”

How’s that for an election platform? I’d vote for that guy wouldn’t you? Actually you did, or more specifically your grandparents did, these are quotes attributed to Calvin Coolidge. The liberal historians look at Coolidge whose term was from 1923-1929, as a do nothing president, but in reality he was a largely successful one. Would to God that we had this type of do nothing president in the white house today! Their never has been the magical day when we had 100% agreement on every issue involving the constitution, but the practice of simply ignoring and disobeying the constitution is relatively new.  We can look largely to the constitutional revolution of 1937 as the beginning of what could be the end of constitutional liberty. This is also the basis for most of the current assaults from the Obama administration on our freedoms today.

The law in question was the Social Security Act of 1935. Is anyone surprised? Just as the Black court redefined the meaning of the 1^st amendment in 1948, (see last week’s post) so did the Hughes court in 1937 with the term “general welfare”. At risk of oversimplifying the case for the establishment of social security the fundamental question was this: does the general welfare clause give the congress power to act beyond the specifically enumerated powers of the constitution? article 1 section 8 of the US constitution which reads, “  The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”  In its most liberal interpretation the Federal government would have broad and sweeping power as long as it could show some intent for the general welfare, on this point Jefferson warned “instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.” Likewise  James Madison warned  "If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare,
they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress.... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America."

To apply the test of constitutionality to the social security act of 1935, we first look at the wording of the constitution. If general welfare was a broad based grant of power than the further enumeration of powers would have been redundant, this was however a concern even then and is a large part of the reason that the 10th amendment was added (the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.) without which the constitution would not have been ratified.  This plus the clear quotes of the founders to determine intent make it clear that the decision to uphold the social security act was not the constitutionally correct one.

Yet this expansive interpretation of general welfare is deeply rooted in the lexicon of society and the entitlements which it birthed are both bankrupting us and immobilizing our political leadership through the paralyzing fear of alienating those voters dependent on those entitlements.

 The strength of our constitution is in its ideas; ideas are contained in those words and as long as those words are respected the freedoms guaranteed in the constitution are secure and will withstand any assault, but if those words are open to every whim of any judge than they are weak and now we are to the point that even the fundamental freedom of religion is only guaranteed to the extent the government sees fit to allow.

The Obama administration contraceptive mandate is not the first or only example of trampling the constitution it is merely the most egregious. In our next post we will begin detailing the specific Obama policies that defy the constitution and what can and must be done about it.  

I will close with one more Coolidge quote:

Because of what America is and what America has done, a firmer courage, a higher hope, inspires the heart of all humanity.

March 4, 1925

This is what we have been, and can still be if we keep on the firing line. 

Who says we have religious freedom anyway?

Last time out, we examined the foundation for religious freedom in America by looking at the writings of Jefferson himself. It was clear that the Jeffersonian idea of separation of Church and State was never intended as a restriction of the right of the individual to practice their faith in the public arena. From the adoption of the 1^st amendment until 

McCollum v. Board of Education, School District 71 (1948) this remained the primary and I dare say correct interpretation of the Constitution. 157 years after the 1^st amendment was put in place Justice Hugo Black and 5 other men (the decision was 6-1) took it upon themselves to rewrite the very meaning of the single most important concept in the whole founding of America.

The case in question revolved around a partnership between clergy of various faiths, (protestant Catholic and Jew) and the school district in Champaign County Ill. These clergy would once a week make available to students, but only with their parents permission, religious classes. Those students whose parents so chose were excused from their regular classes at this time, no specific denomination or sect was the “chosen” faith of the school and no one had to send their kids. Since nothing was compulsory except school attendance and no one was ever compelled to make a statement of faith as a grade of performance, the school argued that no establishment was taking place.

Let’s read again the first amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The wording says Congress shall make no law respecting—the text of the first amendment does not deal in any way with restricting the manner in which schools may conduct studies on religion, unless congress should mandate a law establishing, for example, Secular Humanism as the only teachable religion and that its precepts must be taught as fact. So the first thing the court should have looked at was the actual wording of the law. This was clearly in favor of the school district.

Second, after reading the law in context an attempt must be made to determine original intent. a few quotes from the founders, in addition to the writings of Jefferson from last week should provide insight:

 Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.” BENJAMIN RUSH, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION. Benjamin Rush, Letters of Benjamin Rush

“Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man towards God.” GOUVERNEUR MORRIS,PENMAN AND SIGNER OF THE CONSTITUTION. 

“You have . . . received a public education, the purpose whereof hath been to qualify you the better to serve your Creator and your country. . . . Your first great duties, you are sensible, are those you owe to Heaven, to your Creator and Redeemer. Let these be ever present to your minds, and exemplified in your lives and conduct.” WILLIAM SAMUEL JOHNSON, SIGNER OF THE CONSTITUTION

“As piety, religion and morality have a happy influence on the minds of men, in their public as well as private transactions, you will not think it unseasonable, although I have frequently done it, to bring to your remembrance the great importance of encouraging our University, town schools, and other seminaries of education, that our children and youth while they are engaged in the pursuit of useful science, may have their minds impressed with a strong sense of the duties they owe to their God.” SAMUEL ADAMS.  

Just a few quotes but it clearly establishes that the founders did not believe that faith should be excluded from education. Original intent therefore seems also to have been with the school district.

The problem was that the Court did not like the wording or intent of the constitution so they decided to redefine it. This is how the liberals work and have worked since the days of FDR, “if we don’t like the constitution we simply reinterpret it.”  as much as I hate to admit it at times the framers, brilliant though they were made mistakes. Let’s look at one to see the proper way to change the US constitution.

Once upon a time in America ladies couldn’t vote or more specifically the individual states had the right to determine who could and could not vote. The founders had reasons for their position on voting privileges but in the end allowing states to limit rights to vote was not the correct decision. As early as 1869 some states and territories began granting suffrage to women. In 1872 a case was filed before the Supreme Court (Minor vs Happersett) that argued that the 14^th amendment could be applied to women’s suffrage. Suffrage was the morally correct choice but the wording of the 14^th amendment (No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.) and the review of the constitution’s original writing and the clear intent of the framers the court ruled unanimously that voting was not intended as an immutable right of citizenship. To change this fundamental deficiency an amendment to the US constitution was proposed in 1878. it took 41 years to get this through congress but in 1919 2/3 of both houses approved a joint resolution amending the constitution which was then sent to the states for ratification on August 18, 1920 2/3 of the state legislatures voted to ratify the amendment and “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”  became the permanent and indelible law of the land.

That is how it is done; it is slow and difficult because it is supposed to be slow and difficult. The founders in their wisdom knew that sometimes changes would be necessary but what they did not want was a fundamental structural change to take place based on a whim of a congress elected in two year increments. What Hugo Black and the court did in 1948 was to take into their hands the power of fundamentally changing the basic definition of the 1^st amendment and redefine it to meet a political goal. Why the liberals did this and do it now is not hard to understand, could you convince 2/3 of both houses and 2/3 of state legislatures to approve a change to the constitution that says “the free exercise of religion shall be defined as the secretary of Health and Human services shall determine”

The constitution was written to defend individual liberty, and guarantee our inalienable rights. As long as the President and congress ignore the constitution then all rights are in jeopardy, indeed we are not free men and women at all.

More on this administration’s assault on the constitution next time.

Keep on the Firing line.