"Our border is more secure than anytime in the past 20 years"

So intones the Most High Annointed One, may peace be upon him.



“Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2: Drugs, Guns, and 850 Illegal Aliens” is the Center for Immigration Studies' second web-based film on the impact of illegal alien activity in Arizona. The Center's first video on the subject, “Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border: Coyotes, Bears, and Trails,” has received over 50,000 views to date. This new 10-minute mini-documentary raises the bar, featuring footage of both illegal-alien entry as well as gun- and drug-smuggling. At minimum, the inescapable conclusion is that hidden cameras reveal a reality that illegal-alien activity is escalating.

The hidden camera footage, acquired from a variety of sources, indicates that there is an unfortunate lack of federal law enforcement presence on Arizona’s federal land on the border in Nogales, in the Coronado National Forest (15 miles inside the border), and the Casa Grande Sector (80 miles inside the border). Also significant to the story are responses received as part of Freedom of Information Act requests made by Janice Kephart, the Center’s Director of National Security Studies, in August 2009. Featured in the film is a 2004 federal government PowerPoint showing the near-complete devastation of a borderland national park due to illegal-alien activity, highlighting the disconnect between the situation on the ground in Arizona and Washington rhetoric.


Credits:
Director/Writer/Narrator/B roll film:
Janice Kephart

Video Production/Graphics/Editing:
Bryan Griffith

Music Composition/Production/Editing:
Buddy Speir

Nogales/Casa Grande Footage:
SecureBorderIntel.org

Coronado Footage:
BorderInvasionPics.com

Islamic Extremists Are the Enemy

Bambi and the rest of the Disney characters occupying the White House aren't calling anyone our enemy. They won't even use the terms islam and terrorism in the same paragraph. As long as followers of Islam respect the rights of non-muslims to worship freely, I have no issues with them. Unfortunately, Islam, via the Koran, tells followers they must not allow kafirs, infidels, to worship at all. So how do you be a good muslim and still respect the rights of others?

You can't, according to the extremists.

This is a long article but well worth the read:
Obama at odds with Petraeus doctrine on 'Islam'

People in the administration should be making the clear distinction between Islam, which is a religion and which is not our enemy, and extremist Islamism, which is a political ideology and is our enemy. … The fact is our enemies fly the banner of Islam. They claim to represent the religion. There are other people in the religion who say they don't. What we need to be clear about is, our enemy has an extremist political
ideology. They describe that ideology as the true religion. And there is no way we can deal with this phenomenon without confronting the fact that the enemy political ideology is rooted in a religion."

From Anti-Mullah via FreeRepublic

WITH OBAMA'S INCREASINGLY CLEAR INABILITY TO GOVERN INSTEAD OF JUST SHOOTING OFF HIS MOUTH AND HIS PLUMMETING LOSS OF POPULARITY AS HE DESTROYS AMERICA, THE DETAILS SHOWN BELOW WILL BE FORCED INTO THE OPEN AND IN ALL LIKELIHOOD HE WILL BE OBLIGED TO LEAVE THE OVAL OFFICE - EVEN POSSIBLY IN HANDCUFFS.

Expert examination will easily bring the forgeries to light, so everything is still being hidden and not made available to anyone.

Even RECENTLY passing a law making it unnecessary for the Aloha State to respond to enquiries regarding the birth documents or anything related to them!

MEANWHILE
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad has repeatedly stated that it is only througn Iran that Obama will survive in holding onto his office. Everyone thinks he's nuts. And as a Hojatieh (search on this site) adherant he truly is weird and certifiably crazy.

However before we mock his statement let's extrapolate it.

Obama has lost his aura. The heavy negatives and even his right to his office (lack of it) are tightening around him. Attacking Iran can provide him a solution:

Read the rest here.

Re-Posted In It's Entirety

Alexander's Essay – July 8, 2010
Barackracy, Part 1
Breaking the Back of Free Enterprise

Folks with extensive training in strategic analysis tend to have a very different viewpoint of the macro-political machinations from that of folks in the trenches who have a more tactical perspective. As such, strategic viewpoints are many times received with great skepticism.

At ground level, for example, one might have a problem with the following strategic analysis: It would appear that Barack Hussein Obama's macro agenda for the U.S. economy is to break the back of capitalism and, in the ensuing crisis, use government intervention to replace it with a more refined socialist economic framework than the one currently in place.

If that analysis makes you uncomfortable, prepare to become far more so if his agenda succeeds.
As one with excessive formal training in the art of strategic analysis, I can assure you that Obama's plan, as outlined above, is progressing on schedule.

In regard to the failing economy, Obama recently said, "Make no mistake, we are headed in the right direction, but ... we're not headed there fast enough for a lot of Americans."

Many people hear those words and interpret them to mean that we're progressing toward economic recovery. However, the strategic analyst hears that the Left's objective of a socialized economy is just upon the horizon, that Obama and company would like to bring it to dock at a much faster pace and with such forceful momentum to ensure that the "fundamental transformation of America" can't be undone.

House Minority Leader John Boehner gets it. In regard to House Democrats' passage of Obama's so called "economic reform plan," Boehner responded, "The writing is on the wall for President Obama's 'stimulus' policies and everyone -- taxpayers, economists, and the rest of the world -- sees it but him. How much longer are we going to continue with this disastrous spending spree that is scaring the hell out of the American people and piling debt on our kids and grandkids?"
Answer: As long as it takes to fulfill their Leftist agenda.

"We had to take some tough steps to pull the country out of the free fall we faced when I took office," says the blame-shifting Obama.

For the record, the current economic debacle began with a crisis of confidence in the U.S. housing and security markets -- a crisis largely driven by Democrat policies and their refusal to rein in the government-sponsored mortgage enterprises known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The ensuing financial market collapse in the weeks ahead of the 2008 presidential election resulted in the selection of a charismatic radical Leftist community organizer as president of the United States.

Commenting on the agenda of his newly elected boss, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said infamously, "Never allow a crisis to go to waste." And they haven't.

It is no small irony that on the very day Obama asserted the economy is "headed in the right direction," the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reported, based on the implementation of Obama's "economic recovery" agenda thus far, that the current accumulation of debt will exceed 100 percent of gross domestic production by 2025, and will total almost twice GDP by 2035.

But not to worry, I suspect our economy will collapse long before our national debt reaches that level. The burden of debt accumulation at current levels makes the current economic problems of socialist European states seem like gnats on an elephant's ... uh, rear.

The CBO report concludes, "Large budget deficits would reduce national saving, leading to higher interest rates, more borrowing from abroad, and less domestic investment -- which in turn would lower income growth in the United States. Growing debt would also reduce lawmakers' ability to respond to economic downturns and other challenges. Over time, higher debt would increase the probability of a fiscal crisis in which investors would lose confidence in the government's ability to manage its budget, and the government would be forced to pay much more to borrow money."

In other words, unless Obama's agenda is overturned, the U.S. will one day be a subsidiary of Red China.

On the principles of free enterprise, Obama proclaims, "We already tried the other side's ideas. We already know where their theories led us. And now we have a choice as a nation. We can return to the failed economic policies of the past, or we can keep building a stronger future. We can go backward, or we can keep moving forward. I don't know about you, but I want to move forward."

Obama apparently hopes a majority of Americans have no idea where the Left's theories led in places like the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, he's probably right, given that many of his constituents are little more than sycophantic lemmings, having been sufficiently dumbed down in our government-run education institutions.

Obama's primary co-conspirator in this extra-constitutional folly to undermine the economy is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she of the following ridiculous claim: "When I became Speaker of the House, the very first day we passed legislation that made Paygo the rule of the House. The federal government will pay as it goes."

In other words, she promised that Congress would not pass unfunded spending bills. But that would mean either radically reining in spending, or implementing vast new tax initiatives on virtually all income earners, which she and Obama promised they would not do. Thus, Pelosi's Congress has added more than $1 trillion to the national debt, taking the U.S. Debt Clock beyond the $13 trillion mark.

To put their plan into perspective, national debt was about 40 percent of GDP when Obama took office, but with the economic recession resulting in greatly reduced tax revenues, the national debt will be 62 percent of GDP by the end of this year. That would be an increase of more than 50 percent in just two years. (I recommend you read this paragraph at least twice!)

For a complete analysis of federal waste, see the Heritage Foundation's study, "30,543 Reasons Spending Is Out of Control."

To make matters worse, Obama continues to inflate the bloated central government beyond any recognition of its constitutional authority even as American families and businesses must cut back to make ends meet. Adding insult to injury, non-military federal employee salaries are now 40 percent higher than private sector salaries on average, and while private sector benefit packages average $9,882, government employee benefits average $32,115.

This week, Obama laughingly launched his annual "SAVE" Award dog and pony show, ostensibly encouraging federal employees to recommend how to save taxpayer dollars. I have more than a few ideas, but Obama did not ask taxpayers how to save taxpayer dollars.

That old sage Will Rogers once quipped, "Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for." If he only knew...

Demonstrating the extent to which government has exceeded its constitutional mandate, my colleague Walter Williams wrote, "In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 to assist some French refugees, James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, stood on the floor of the House to object, saying, 'I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.' He later added, '[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.'"

Professor Williams concludes, "Two hundred years later, at least two-thirds of a multi-trillion-dollar federal budget is spent on charity or 'objects of benevolence.'"

Is there still time to restore the primacy of Free Enterprise over Socialism and turn back Obama and his Leftist ilk?

The short answer is, yes. Next week Part 2 of this essay, "Reversing Course and Restoring Liberty," will clearly outline how to restore the constitutional role of government.

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post

Imagine If They Had Been White Separatists

We'd have wall to wall coverage of the trial; Reverend Al would be in front of any camera with initials on it, ranting about racism and intimidation; Reverend JJ would be ready to cut off gonads; Prissy Matthews would have tingles up both legs and would probably be peeing down one of them in excitement. You see, us white folks can't have a New White Panther Party for Self-Defense cause that would be RACIST. We can't have an NAAWP, cause that would be RACIST. We can't have a United Caucasian College Fund cause THAT WOULD BE RACIST!!!!

But a bunch of thugs and punks from the ghetto, who think they're cool cause they wear mooooslim headgear and long robes can resurrect another gang of thugs and punks and claim its for self-defense. (Right about now, I wish I hadn't put restrictions on what can be published on the blog, cause I'm ready to rant)

JW Sues DOJ for Documents Regarding Decision to Dismiss of Lawsuit against New Black Panther Party..

Washington, DC -- May 25, 2010 - Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama Justice Department to obtain documents related to the agency’s decision to dismiss the claims against several members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense who were accused of engaging in voter intimidation during the 2008 presidential campaign (U.S. v. New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense).

Judicial Watch filed its original FOIA request on May 29, 2009. The Justice Department acknowledged receiving the request on June 18, 2009, but then referred the request to the Office of Information Policy (OIP) and the Civil Rights Division.

On January 15, 2010, the OIP notified Judicial Watch that it would be responding
to the request on behalf of the Offices of the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, Associate Attorney General, Public Affairs, Legislative Affairs, Legal Policy, and Intergovernmental and Public Liaison.

On January 15, the OIP also indicated that the Office of the Associate Attorney
General found 135 pages of records responsive to Judicial Watch’s request, but that all records would be withheld in full. On January 26, the OIP advised Judicial Watch that the Office of Public Affairs and Office of Legal Policy completed their searches and found no responsive documents. On February 10, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division indicated that after an extensive search it had located “numerous responsive records” but determined that “access to the majority of the records” should be denied. On March 26, the OIP indicated that the Office of Legislative Affairs and the Office of Intergovernmental and Public Liaison completed searches and found no documents.

Judicial Watch appealed the determinations of the Office of the Associate Attorney General and the Civil Rights Division. To date, Judicial Watch has received neither a
response regarding searches conducted by the Offices of the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, nor responses to its two administrative appeals prompting its lawsuit. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent, bipartisan unit of the federal government charged with investigating and reporting on civil rights issues, has also initiated a probe of the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss its lawsuit.

The Justice Department originally filed its lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and several of its members following an incident that took place outside of a Philadelphia polling station on November 4, 2008. A video of the
incident showing a member of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense brandishing police-style baton weapon was widely distributed on the Internet.

According to multiple witnesses, members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense attempted to block access to polling stations, harassed voters and hurled racial epithets. Nonetheless, the Justice Department ultimately allegedly overruled the recommendations of its own staff and dismissed the majority of its claims.

“The Obama administration owes the American people an explanation. How can the Justice Department dismiss a clear-cut case of voter intimidation involving the use of a weapon? Are voting rights important at the Justice Department? If there is nothing to hide, then Eric Holder should release this information as the law requires. And this is just one more example of how Obama’s promises of transparency are a big lie,” said Judicial Watch Tom Fitton.

Zero owes us a country. What an arrogant, self-centered piece of dog crap.

All you idots who voted for this piece of offal should be hanging your head in shame about now. You managed to put the one politician in office who could destroy everything your forebears worked hard to build. I hope when you die, your ancestors are lined up waitng to bitch-slap you for being so incredibly stupid.

I Just Want To Re-visit Something

Just want to re-visit this for a moment.

Please humor an old paranoid cynic who’s read too many Ludlum, Clancy, and Koontz novels, and believes in the premise of evil as a force for change.

North Korea sank the South Korean ship…there’s no doubt. South Korea held the pink slip on the Deep Horizon..Hundyai Industrial…

If NK would sink an SK naval vessel, they damn sure wouldn’t think twice about sabotaging an SK oil rig.

They know Bambi won’t retaliate…hell it could have been deliberate to help Bambi’s agenda. It sure played right into the “no-drilling at all” agenda.

Tin foil hat is now back in the box.
Thank you for your patience.

PISA-Paper Industry Salvation Act of 2010

Obamacare: Paperwork You Can Believe In
by Deroy Murdock
05/17/2010

NEW YORK -- President Barack Obama promised Americans “health care reform.” So far, “health care form” is more like it.

ObamaCare is devolving into the Paper Industry Salvation Act of 2010. This new law spans 2,562 tree-killing pages. Far worse, it will force Americans to spend countless, irritating hours completing, transmitting, and filing endless reams of federal paperwork.

The scariest news for America’s forests may be a brand-new mandate that will compel each business — from General Electric to the neighborhood handyman — to file an IRS Form 1099 for every business on which it spends at least $600. Form 1099 today applies only to independent contractors, e.g. a graphic artist who earns $1,000 for designing a sales brochure. Come 2012, ObamaCare vastly will expand 1099s to sellers of goods as well as services, and not just the self-employed, but also businesses — large and small.

“This will create a two-fold whammy for small businesses,” predicts Rep. Dan Lungren (R – California) who is sponsoring legislation to repeal this provision. “They will have additional accounting costs that will consume time and money,” Lungren tells me. “They will be required to keep a running tab with every vendor, all the way from restaurants to anything they buy — a piece of equipment, an airline ticket, or a hotel room. And when they reach the $600 threshold, they will be required to file 1099s for each of those vendors.”

Read the rest here.

The Hammer On Rush On the Oil Rig

The Alternative, Non-Truther Reading of Rush's Oil-Rig Rant

BY Mary Katharine Ham

Several bloggers are calling Rush Limbaugh the equivalent of a 9/11 Truther for alleging on his radio show that the oil-rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico was an inside job perhaps perpetrated by the Obama administration. I didn't listen to the show, so I don't have the full context, but judging from the transcript of the segment, there's pretty clearly a different, more reasonable conclusion one can draw from it.

It's Occam's Razor time.

Ezra Klein and Kevin Drum say Limbaugh is accusing the Obama administration of blowing up the rig based on this paragraph. James Joyner is more circumspect, but comes to a similar conclusion:

RUSH: "I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig. Since they're sending SWAT teams down there now this changes the whole perspective of this. Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day. I remember that. And then it was postponed for a couple of days later after Earth Day, and then of course immigration has now moved in front of it. But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they're sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they're sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I'm just noting the timing here. "

The last sentence does sound suspect—frankly, it's hard to tell what exactly he means in that paragraph alone—but the paragraph before it makes a lot more sense and colors the one above. The full segment transcript is here:

RUSH: "Wow. All right, so SWAT teams, we're sending big sis down there, Janet Napolitano, to look at all the valves and stuff, make sure they're properly greased. He-he-he-he. Ahem. And Lisa Jackson is doing the same thing. So obviously the regime is open to the idea that this is not an accident. The regime is open to the possibility that this could well have been on purpose. Don't forget, the original Earth Day, 40 years ago, was inspired by the river in Cleveland catching fire. Forty years later, the day before Earth Day this year, the Gulf is on fire. Coincidence? Jury's still out. The regime is on the case, soon to tell us what happened."

In this paragraph, Limbaugh is not saying SWAT teams are proof that the Obama administration is blowing things up, but proof that the Obama administration thinks there's a possibility that the explosion could have been eco-terrorism, and is guarding against it on other rigs. This is not a totally outlandish thought, as the FBI deemed eco-terrorism the nation's biggest domestic threat as recently as 2008.

Glenn Reynolds expressed the same fear of foul play, albeit much less colorfully. Another report linked by Glenn suggests "swat team" might just be the way the Interior Department is referring to its inspector squad, which would invalidate Limbaugh's theory, but that wasn't at all clear at the time he was on air.

When Limbaugh goes on to talk about timing, in the paragraph cited by Drum and Klein, my read is he's talking about the fact that an oil-rig explosion happened the day before the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and just weeks after the Obama administration announced it was open to more offshore drilling—a move that would have undoubtedly incensed the kind of people who perpetrate eco-terrorism.

He mentions in the segment that Al Gore encouraged civil disobedience, which he seems to posit eco-terrorists could have taken to heart. He also mentions strongly worded press releases from environmentalist groups like Sierra Club. (Maybe Rush is moving toward the "words matter" camp?)

I have a story here from Reuters, September 24th, 2008 (shuffling paper) right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers: "Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmental crusader Al Gore urged young people on Wednesday to engage in civil disobedience to stop the construction of coal plants without the ability to store carbon."

So you got the guru here urging civil disobedience, you got the regime sending SWAT teams down there to all the rigs in the Gulf. They're sending SWAT teams to all the rigs in the Gulf! Whoa ho-ho-ho. So obviously Obama thinks the tea partiers are expert scuba divers as well or maybe they have their own fleet of underwater submarines that can go deep enough to go undetected, set explosives, and hightail it back to the protests in Ohio, or wherever they (laughing) happen to be.

The second paragraph is a joke about how SWAT teams were seemingly called out at an Obama event to defend against a group of peaceful Tea Party protesters. (They were actually just police in riot gear, and were likely there just to protect against the worst-case scenario at an Obama event, but the video juxtaposition was funny.)

Here, Rush seems to be sarcastically analogizing what the left sometimes describes as tantamount to a domestic terrorism movement (Tea Party) and what he believes may be a more immediate domestic terrorism threat (ecoterrorism).

I'm not sure why Limbaugh didn't just say eco-terrorism, and that leaves it up to interpretation, but there is a much more innocuous reading of this passage than, "Obama blew up an oil rig on purpose."

If Limbaugh were saying Obama is using SWAT teams to blow up an oil rig to foil future off-shore drilling, why would he also say SWAT teams are proof that Obama's "open to the possibility that this could well have been on purpose?" Limbaugh either thinks Obama sent SWAT teams to defend/investigate or to destroy, but he doesn't believe both. The former is more likely.

Bambi At NASA (or Where IS that Damn Easter Bunny?)

The full story of Bambi's visit to the Kennedy Space Center on Tax Day.

The President at Space X
- His motorcade proceeded not far from the building where I work. There is no picture for this historic moment in my life because every building on the military installation near his motorcade was put into complete lockdown.
- The President then gave a 45 minute speech on his plans for NASA at the Operations and Control building. One thousand employees were given paid leave to keep them out of the building the entire day. The O&C building was in lockdown from 7 AM to 7 PM including the surrounding parking lots.
- The speech was given to persons who received a White House invitation.
- The President then flew out from the SLF around 3:45 PM.

The President came to “talk to us” about the future of NASA, but NONE of “us” were at his speech. Nor were we able to even wave to him as he drove around. Even his supporters that I work with were livid that they could not even walk out of the building to view his motorcade at a distance. One even stormed off from the single window facing the road he traveled and stated that America is not free.

I can understand the desire for safety for our President, but this was serious over-kill. The President was on a secure facility; surrounded by unarmed nerds with federally investigated backgrounds. Many of the employees at NASA-KSC have been around since the beginning of the shuttle program. I can honestly say that I do not believe we would have been confined to our buildings or that entire buildings would have been shut down for an entire day if Bush had ever visited… or any other past President for that matter. We, as the media labeled us, truly were hostile territory for this President.

The President’s speech did not tell us anything more than what we could have read in Florida Today. We will still lose 8,000 jobs at just KSC alone. He will “save” ~2,000 jobs… not really. Though, his logic is very similar to the health care bill. We will spend (i.e. lose) 8,000 ($1 trillion dollars) jobs in order to save 2,000 jobs ($100 billion) in the future. He is still cancelling Constellation. He is still relegating us to the back of the bus in the space industry. We still do not have a private industry that can send humans into space. We will give foreign countries millions to employ their citizens in order to send our astronauts into space.

He has proclaimed that he is giving us a “new” direction much like JFK did when he proclaimed that America would go to the moon. Only, his new direction does not have us going to the moon or Mars or even the ISS! He wants us to find where the Easter bunny lives (i.e. Climate Change). This is not a direction for NASA. This is the destruction of America’s lead in space.

This President spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to come and tell us everything we already knew. He could have simply remained in D.C. and given the same worthless speech to save everyone time and money.

Operations at KSC were shut down; some for the entire day. For what? Well, we did learn something. When this President is around the “intelligent workforce that America’s space industry cannot afford to lose,” we will be locked down and prevented from seeing him.

This narcissistic, communistic President has betrayed America over and over again. His reign of destruction will prove difficult to fix when he is voted out in 2012.
Are you, America, up for the challenge?

Kinda makes you think of royalty the way he only has hand-picked people at his rallies and speeches. (or Iran. or the old Soviet Union. or the new Russia. or North Korea. or Cuba. or Venezuela.)

Just Throwing This Out For Consideration

Because I am the original cynical paranoid SOB..(Sweet Ole Bob)..and I don't believe in coincidences.

Hard on the heels of Dr Utopia announcing that offshore drilling would be "explored", comes a disastrous drill platform explosion and fire that releases millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf.

We won't know exactly what happened for weeks, probably months, if ever, and trusting the source of whatever information the media releases is marginal.

I believe we are facing a turning point in American history. The wealthiest nation on the planet, in terms of freedom and the ability to further ones own economic and social standing simply by working hard, is facing a crisis of monumental proportions due primarily to the politicians now in power.

Politicians who crave power the way a crack head craves their next hit. They are addicts. They are addicted to the power, and like crack heads, I believe they are capable of almost anything to further their agenda and keep/increase their power.

I also believe the socialist, marxist, communist, progressive (whatever) movement, specifically the people behind it, are capable of orchestrating and creating conditions and events that will further their agenda. I know from history that communists have killed people to maintain control. I know Karl Marx wrote that the ends always justify the means, no matter what.

So the questions are:
Was this drill rig accident just an "accident" or a convenient incident?

Why is Homeland Security involved in a petroleum "accident"?

Were there any new employees or recent arrivals on this platform?

What type of security is enabled on an offshore rig? (I mean the SOB is in the midde of the Gulf, its not like you can sneak up on it.)

Just asking.

As soon as I am satisfied that this was just a horrible industrial accident with very serious environmental issues, I'll go back to my cave, continue beating my kids, plot global domination and world peace, and be paranoid and cynical, like a good Southern redneck should.

Until then....maybe we need to ask some questions.

Editorials from the DCExaminer

WASHINGTON EXAMINER EDITORIAL HIGHLIGHTS

Obamacare Rx: Don't get sick

Today's Examiner Editorial
"You will also want to avoid getting sick if at all possible once Obamacare is fully in effect because you'll no longer be able to deduct a big portion of major medical expenses from your taxes."

Obama's credibility crisis

Examiner Sunday Editorial
"It seems entirely appropriate to ask if GM's repayment claims were 'suggested' by somebody in the Obama White House."

Weakening America starts with emasculating our intelligence agencies

Jed Babbin, Part One of a Five-Part Series
"Espionage is probably the world's second-oldest profession. But Obama and congressional liberals treat its U.S. practitioners as if they were engaged in the first."

Obama's law-breaking Pentagon

James Jay Carafano, Examiner Columnist
"No strategy is a real problem. By letting the Quadrenniel Defense Review cart roll in front of the strategy horse, Obama is depriving both the Congress and the American people of a full and clear picture of what he is up to."

Immigration and the congressional GOP

Hugh Hewitt, Examiner Columnist
"Because the immigration issue divides Republicans and unites Democrats, the president's team is thankful for an issue on which to pivot away from Obamacare."

What about when the government is anti-people?

Mark Hemingway, Examiner Columnist
"In other words, Clinton and Reno approved a military-style assault with the potential of giving a number of infants present chemical burns and toxic pneumonia. That wasn't an unfortunate consequence -- that was the plan."

Then there's the 'hateful rhetoric' from the Left

Gregory Kane, Examiner Columnist
"Let's see, there was the Weather Underground, in which Bombin' Billy Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, played prominent roles. The Puerto Rican FALN committed more than 100 bombings across the United States and its homeland. Members of the Symbionese Liberation Army murdered Oakland, Calif., schools Superintendent Marcus Foster in 1973."

Morning Emails from DCExaminer

Byron York - GOP Obamacare strategy: Try repeal, then cut
There's an ongoing debate among Republicans about what it means to repeal Obamacare. Does it mean abolishing the whole thing? Does it mean nullifying just the most troublesome parts? Repealing and simultaneously enacting a new set of reforms? Or repealing and then starting a new debate on what reforms to make?
"House Republicans will not rest until we repeal Obamacare lock, stock and barrel," Rep. Mike Pence, head of the House Republican Conference, told me from Arizona, where he had gone to campaign for GOP candidates. "I believe that's the uniform position of the Republican leadership."

Susan Ferrechio - Obama nuke treaty has a tough path ahead in Senate
It will take 67 senators to ratify the new treaty, a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which means at least eight Republicans must endorse it, assuming it wins the support of all 57 Democrats and two independents.

David Freddoso - McDonnell’s first serious gaffe
Yesterday, McDonnell added a section on slavery, with an apology for the omission. Good for him.

Gallup: Independents worried about economy, deficit
The economy is the No. 1 concern for a majority of voters heading into 2010’s midterm elections, but the deficit comes in close behind, particularly with all-important independent voters, according to a new Gallup poll.
The economy tops a list of concerns, unsurprisingly, for 57 percent of voters, with health care (49%) and unemployment (46%) rounding out the top three. But when you examine the numbers among just independent voters, the federal budget deficit becomes the second-most important issue at 52 percent.

Words - Just Words

Defensive much? Obama gives rambling, incoherrent 17 minute response to concern about being ‘overtaxed’
By: Mark Hemingway

We constantly hear about the President’s supposedly cool demeanor and unflappability, regardless of evidence to the contrary. Keep that in mind as you read this Washington Post account:

Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a “wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care” package.

“We are over-taxed as it is,” Doris said bluntly.

Obama started out feisty. “Well, let’s talk about that, because this is an area where there’s been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I’m going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have,” the president said.

He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer – more than 2,500 words long — wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, “F-Map”). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as “FICA”).

But wait, there’s more!

REPEAL!!!!!!

Why Obamacare Can Be Repealed

BY John McCormack

Sean Trende has an important piece at RealClearPolitics, which I won't excerpt because you really should read the whole thing.

Update: Also not to be missed is Jeffrey Anderson's A Three-Year Plan for the Repeal of ObamaCare.

Morning Must Reads from DCExaminer

NBC News -- Obama: I’ll continue to reach out to GOP
One would be tempted to say NBC was the most ridiculous and fawning of all the news organizations when it comes to interviewing President Obama – Brian Williams going out for burgers with the president, etc. – but that would be giving short shrift to CBS. Sixty Minutes man Steve Kroft has been nuzzling Obama since back in the Democratic primaries and on Friday, Harry Smith will interview the president during a game of hoops at the White House basketball court – with a cheesy cross promotion to the network’s March madness coverage. That’s bush league, even for a morning show.

But NBC probably still wins the battle of the lightweights on points.

This morning, the president’s interview with Matt Lauer aired on Today. Credulous throughout, asked the president was if he really he could reach out to the Right, despite all the things they’ve said and done. Obama said that though conservatives are undeserving, he would still help them overcome their petty fears and prejudices.

The Lauer interview, Smith’s hoop dreams, and the visit to snub Hamid Karzai in person in Afghanistan, are all part of the rollout of the new, new Obama – the tough guy who gets results.

Today Obama will also sign the health care reconciliation bill, which the White House is re-branding as a college loan bill. The feds took over the student loan program to Hoover up billions of dollars currently going to private bank interest and repurpose it to Obamacare. The bill also adds hundreds of billions in new taxes, including a 4 percent tax on investment income.

But the message from Obama: those who oppose his policies (say, 54 percent of the electorate) have been led astray by radical and racist xenophobes who hate him personally and have no legitimate reason to dissent. Obama blames the news media for spreading these bitter, clinging instincts to other succeptable minds. (To complain about bad press in the middle of such sycophancy must have been some kind of veiled joke.)

If you think that spending $2 trillion when we’re already $12 trillion in the hole and that putting a government that has failed to steward the existing welfare programs in charge of the rest of health care sound crazy, you’ve probably been misled by a birther and may soon unwittingly join a militia.

Lauer did not ask the obvious questions – Are you concerned that making these invidious distinctions for your own political gain will further divide the country? Are you concerned that it will backfire?

Brett Baier, and to a lesser extent, George Stephanopoulos are so far the only interviewers who I’ve seen question Obama’s assumptions.

But maybe I’m just mad because Obama jinxed my WVU Mountaineers by picking them to beat Duke and win the national championship. You know Obama’s a Duke guy. Why pick on West Virginia?

“Moving back to domestic topics, Obama took a measured view of the Tea Party movement that has focused its anger on him and his administration. He took care to distinguish between the people who question his citizenship and who are convinced he’s a socialist and those who are simply concerned about the future of a country going through economic turmoil.

‘There's a part of the Tea Party that actually did exist before I was elected … where there's some folks who just weren't sure whether I was born in the United States, whether I was a socialist. Then I think that there's a broader circle around that core group of people who are legitimately concerned about the deficit, who are legitimately concerned that the federal government may be taking on too much. And I think those are folks who have legitimate concerns. And my hope is that as we move forward and we're tackling things like the deficit, imposing a freeze on domestic spending, taking steps that show we are sincere about dealing with our long-term problems that some of that group will dissipate.’”

New York Times -- Companies Push to Repeal Provision of Health Law
The shady accounting of the Republicans’ Medicare drug benefit depended on companies continuing to cover retirees’ prescriptions, which was going the way of the defined-benefit pension plan. As an enticement to stay in the game, big employers were given a direct subsidy of 28 percent of the value of the drug benefits but also allowed to deduct the amount of that subsidy from their corporate taxes.

In crafting Obamacare, Democrats took away the subsidy write off and plugged the revenue from continued, consistent consumption into their fantasy accounting projections for the president’s plan.

Of course now that there’s less subsidy, there will be less lavish retirement benefits. And those retirees’ drugs will be 100 percent subsidized on Medicare instead of 28 percent subsidized on a corporate plan.

I hate to be the one to break the news, but this whole universal health insurance thing could turn out to be pretty expensive.

Companies are charging off the loss of revenue as SEC rules require and preparing to change benefits packages. The politically obsessed White House, of course, believes that it’s all political. If the companies would embrace, instead of resisting change – they would see that less money is really more money.

But what will they do about labor?
“Gerry Shea, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s chief strategist on health care, stopped short of calling for a repeal of the provision. ‘We’re very concerned about the disruption that could be caused because of this, with people being pushed out of employer plans,’ he said. ‘With all the changes we’re looking at because of the new health legislation, we feel you don’t need this.’

Mr. Klein argued that the provision would undercut Mr. Obama’s job creation plans. ‘If companies are going to take a hit like this on their financial statements that will certainly hurt their ability to borrow in the marketplace and make the type of investments that will retain and create jobs,’ he said.”

New York Times -- Afghan Leader Is Seen to Flout Influence of U.S.
If you can’t do anything about a problem, why pick at it?

As Ambassador Eikenberry’s cables show, we’ve known that Hamid Karzai is not exactly Mustafa Kemal for a long time.

We had the chance to force him out or let the wolves carry him away and start over with the new replacement, but opted to stick with our man if Afghanistan. So there’s no chance that we will now decide to plunge the country into chaos just at the moment we are trying to pacify and stabilize Afghanistan.

What’s the point of President Obama calling out Karzai for being the figurehead of a marginal government of a narco state ruled by warlords? Presumably it must have something to do with mollifying American liberals because it sure doesn’t play in the Hindu Kush, where everyone is waiting for the attempted U.S. drawdown to begin.

Writers Dexter Filkins and Mark Landler give us the back story.
“This month, with President Hamid Karzai looking ahead to a visit to the White House, he received a terse note from aides to President Obama: Your invitation has been revoked.
The reason, according to American officials, was Mr. Karzai’s announcement that he was emasculating an independent panel that had discovered widespread fraud in Mr. Karzai’s re-election last year.

Incensed, Mr. Karzai extended an invitation of his own — to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who flew to Kabul and delivered a fiery anti-American speech inside Afghanistan’s presidential palace.

“Karzai was enraged,” said an Afghan with knowledge of the events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue. “He invited Ahmadinejad to spite the Americans.”

The dispute was smoothed over only this week, when Mr. Obama flew to Kabul for a surprise dinner with Mr. Karzai.”

Washington Post -- Under shadow of 1957, Arkansas stays out of health-care fight
Writer Peter Slevin tells us that states resisting the imposition of Obamacare in court are walking the same path that the states who fought the application of Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.

What dreck.

Democratic Gov. Mike Bebee of Arkansas said he would not join the dozens of chief executives considering a legal battle to prevent their citizens from being forced into Obamacare. Bebee told reporters that when Arkansas tried to resist Brown v. Board in 1957 it lost, just as the other state would loose this fight too.

Grasping for any link between Obamacare resistance and racism – the very motif Democrats served up on the day they passed the bill – Slevin was off like a shot to Little Rock to soak up this new evidence of moral equivalency between racism and health opposition.

The states fighting Obamacare are seeking a Supreme Court ruling, not resisting one. The states that seek to block the insurance mandate want to preserve individual rights, not impede them.

Also, health care is not a racial issue.

Slevin does not note these differences. Neither does he treat detractors with a shred of fairness.
It’s one thing to do as Matt Lauer does and not question the president’s assumptions, but doing the work of Democrats looking to demonize their political foes is something even worse.

“When President Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division to protect the Little Rock Nine, he told the nation that the Supreme Court's ruling was ‘the law of the land.’ When Obama signed the health-care bill into law at the White House, he said health insurance ‘is the law of the land.’

[Democratic Attorney General Dustin] McDaniel used the same phrase as he explained why Arkansas will not join the lawsuits.

‘The law of the land does, in fact, come from our elected officials in Washington,’ McDaniel said. ‘A state deciding that it wants to singularly defy federal law simply because the citizens may not like it -- that's not the way the democratic process works. That's not the way the Constitution is set up.’”

REPEAL!!!!!!

Since when has the will of the people ever been a factor in anything the dhimmi/socialists decide?

Survey Says: Solid Majorities Want Health Care Challenged/Repealed

9:06 AM, Mar 25, 2010 ·
BY Mary Katharine Ham

The Gallup poll that suddenly found a 49 percent favorability rating for the heretofore disliked Obamacare plan made a well-timed talking point for Democrats, but today we get two more polls that point in the opposite direction, emphatically.

A CBS poll released Wednesday afternoon showed that 62 percent of Americans want the GOP to keep fighting Obamacare. The number among Republicans is unsurprisingly higher (89%), but a remarkable two thirds of Independents want the GOP to fight the bill (66%), and even 41 percent of Democrats.

In the same poll, approval of the plan and of Congressional Democrats went up, as did approval of Washington.

Today's Rasmussen Poll of likely voters, conducted on the two nights after the passage of the bill, shows 55 percent want the bill repealed.

55% favor repealing the legislation. Forty-two percent (42%) oppose repeal. Those figures include 46% who Strongly Favor repeal and 35% who Strongly Oppose it.
In terms of Election 2010, 52% say they’d vote for a candidate who favors repeal over one who does not.

Forty-one percent (41%) would cast their vote for someone who opposes repeal.
Polls before the passage of the bill both a Fox News and a WSJ poll suggested that repeal could be a good political position for Republicans, though they showed slightly lower support than the Rasmussen poll.

20 Ways To Lose Your Freedoms

Here are the first five of the twenty ways ZeroCare will take your freedom.

20 Ways ObamaCare Will Take Away Our Freedoms
By David Hogberg

If some reports are to be believed, the Democrats will pass the Senate health care bill with some reconciliation changes later today. Thus, it is worthwhile to take a comprehensive look at the freedoms we will lose.

Of course, the bill is supposed to provide us with security. But it will result in skyrocketing insurance costs and physicians leaving the field in droves, making it harder to afford and find medical care.

We may be about to live Benjamin Franklin's adage, "People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both."

The sections described below are taken from HR 3590 as agreed to by the Senate and from the reconciliation bill as displayed by the Rules Committee.

1. You are young and don't want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minimize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego health insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 annually for the "privilege." (Section 1501)

2. You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status?
Tough. You'll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That's because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person's health status. (Section 2701).

3. You would like to pay less in premiums by buying insurance with lifetime or annual limits on coverage? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer such policies, even if that is what customers prefer. (Section 2711).

4. Think you'd like a policy that is cheaper because it doesn't cover preventive care or requires cost-sharing for such care? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them with cost-sharing, even if that's what the customer wants. (Section 2712).

5. You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn't allow your employees' slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714).

The rest are here.

Get educated; get involved; get tough.

Reasons of Culture

The American President?
William Katz
Political Mavens.com

Read the rest after the jump

What is the problem here? The problem is that the foreign policy of the United states, under Barack Hussein Obama Jr., can be summarized as follows: Punish our friends, reward our enemies. We have seen this now for more than a year, and the resulting gain for the United States is: nothing.

It would be bad enough if this policy were simply the result of the latest realpolitik theory. This is not the first era, after all, in which being a friend of the United States has had its dangers. In 1956, President Eisenhower, of all people, turned on Britain, France and Israel for their attempt to secure the Suez Canal in Egypt. (He later expressed some regret over his action.) And Jimmy Carter did not inspire confidence among our West European allies.But there is a difference between those episodes, and others like them, and today. Some administrations have occasionally distanced themselves from traditional allies for reasons, often misguided, of policy.

The Obama administration is distancing itself from American allies for reasons of culture. This president barely tolerates his own country. He has little use for its allies, many of which share Western values and ideals. The president, despite his denials, is a man of the Third World. He sees countries like Britain as colonialists, even though the colonial era ended many decades ago.

While he is not a Muslim by religion, Obama is a man with a Muslim cultural background, giving him an affinity for nations that have traditionally been hostile to the United States. His speech last year in Cairo contained more groveling than Neville Chamberlain's remarks at Munich.

Morning Bell - Undermining the Rule of Law

As Meese and Barr so eloquently state, the citizens of this Nation are paying attention and we are concerned about the direction the current Congress and administration is taking. I have faith that the citizens woud never knowingly submit to socialist rule, but I also have enough cynicism built up to know that incremental implementation of socialist programs will ultimately result in a total and complete takeover of American society and we will no longer be the United States of America; and that will be the end of western civilization.

This Process is Undermining the Rule of Law

This week, NBC News and The Wall Street Journal released poll results that are disturbing but by no means surprising. The March 11th - 14th poll of 1000 American adults showed that only 17% of respondents approve of the job Congress is doing in Washington. And as bad as that number is, the reason why Congress' approval rating is so low is even more disturbing: a full 76% of Americans simply do not trust the U.S. Congress.

This was the lowest level of trust for any representative entity tested by NBC/WSJ. It is no coincidence that these record low ratings come amid current debate over health care in Congress. Yesterday, former U.S. Attorneys General Edwin Meese III and William P. Barr released the following statement:

The convoluted and questionable method under discussion by both Houses of Congress for final passage of the long-debated health care legislation raises serious constitutional concerns, which, at best, will lead to protracted and wholly avoidable litigation and continued doubt about the bill’s validity.

Members of Congress from both parties have criticized the use of such sleights of hand, and The Washington Post has rightly editorialized against such “unseemly” and “dodgy” maneuvers for the health care bill. Beyond the obvious practical concerns shared by all citizens, the use of such obscure “rules” for final passage is even harder to justify in light of the real constitutional doubt and the erosion of public confidence in government that it will cause.

Contrary to what President Obama and some congressional leaders have been repeating of late, the American people do care passionately that the process for consideration of health care reform be both constitutional and fair.

At a bare minimum, article I, sec. 7, cl. 2 of the U.S. Constitution requires that before it becomes law “(1) a bill containing its exact text was approved by a majority of the Members of the House of Representatives; (2) the Senate approved precisely the same text; and (3) that text was signed into law by the President.” Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417, 448 (1998).

The “deem and pass” and similar options under consideration in the House of Representatives plainly violate at least the spirit of the Constitution’s bicameralism and presentment requirements. Those constitutional requirements were intended to
ensure democratic transparency with a straightforward up-or-down vote in each house on all bills that become law. More importantly, these requirements were designed to ensure that the new national government actually followed “the consent of the governed,” which the Declaration of Independence had declared to the world was the only basis of legitimate government.

The “deem and pass” options under consideration in the House and the subsequent use of a “reconciliation” process that is reserved for budget issues in acts already signed into law further erode confidence in the rule of law. Some past uses of the “deem and pass” or “self-executing” rules raise similar concerns, but none was as convoluted as the proposed use, and significantly, there may have been no one with legal standing to challenge prior uses in court. Many individuals will have standing to challenge any health reform legislation that restructures one-sixth of the American economy, and the contemplated use of the “deem and pass” maneuver in this instance may be combined with questionable procedural steps in the Senate that render it much more subject to challenge.

There is no need to engage in such procedural machinations, and no asserted reason for doing so exists other than to avoid the traditional legislative safeguards in the
Senate and to obscure the appearance that Members of the House actually voted for the Senate bill, which is a prerequisite for genuine reconciliation. The constitutional requirement of bicameralism should not be jettisoned under any circumstances—and certainly not for such trivial and partisan reasons.

Members of Congress take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Members should violate neither the letter nor spirit of the Constitution, especially when there is so much at stake, not only as a policy matter, but when the very legitimacy of the
legislative process is in question. Given that many parts of the underlying legislation itself raise substantial constitutional concerns, these “unseemly” and “dodgy” procedures underscore the justified concern the American people have that their elected representatives are blatantly disregarding the Constitution, and as a result, undermining the rule of law.

Pulling the Plug on our Constitution

Mark Alexander in the Patriot Post

Pulling the Plug on our Constitution
Our Constitution is on life support, and House Democrats are about to pull the plug.

Leaders of the Democrat Party ("Progressives" as they call themselves, Leftists as we call them) have been unable to garner popular or even Democrat Party support for their plan to socialize our health care system. Fortunately, Republicans are united in their opposition to this one issue.
Barack Hussein Obama, titular head of the Demos, proclaimed, "I want some courage. I want us to do the right thing."

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi concludes, "Nobody wants to vote for the Senate bill."

She is proposing to overtly circumvent our Constitution by way of the "Slaughter Solution." Rep. Louise Slaughter, chairman of the House Rules Committee, proposes to pass legislation using the "self-executing rule," which will allow the House to accept the already-passed Senate health care bill by presumption alone, thus negating a formal up-or-down vote by House members.
Pelosi confessed, "I like it because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill."

Unfortunately, there is precedent in invoking the "self-executing rule" -- by Republicans, no less -- concerning "mundane" legislation agreed to by House leaders of both parties. Unconstitutional as these precedents are, there is nothing "mundane" about ObamaCare.

"Slaughter" and "self-executing" may describe both the process and the electoral future of many Democrats in the House.

Most of the Leftist-controlled political and popular debate about the Democrat proposal to turn over to the central government control of more than 17 percent of the U.S. economy, is focused on one question or another -- what will it cost or save, who will pay and who won't, who will be covered and for what, will there be enough physicians to support this in 10 years, will federal funds be used for abortion, can our economy afford another trillion dollar boondoggle, does it really address the entitlement cost tsunami we're facing, ad infinitum.

These might be interesting topics for debate, but none are germane.

The only relevant debate must begin with First Principles, our Constitution and Rule of Law.
Does our Constitution allow the Executive and Legislative branches to collaborate to confer authority upon the federal government over, in this case, so-called "health care reform"?
Those who laid the Foundation of our Constitution were crystal clear about its enumeration of both the authority and limits upon the central government.

James Madison, our Constitution's primary author, wrote, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined [and] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce."

Madison continued, "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."

To that point, Thomas Jefferson asserted: "[G]iving [Congress] a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole [Constitution] to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly, no such universal power was meant to be given them. [The Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."

Clearly, our Constitution, does not authorize Congress to nationalize health care, anymore than it authorizes Congress to do most of what it does today.

That notwithstanding, Obama and his Leftist cadres in the House and Senate are moving forward with their endeavor to inflict socialized medicine upon the United States.

They have again, one and all, abandoned their oaths to "support and defend" our Constitution.
Democrat "leaders" have all been questioned about constitutional authority, and have uniformly asserted that the question is irrelevant.

Typical of their non-responses was this indignant question from Speaker Pelosi: "Are you serious? Are you serious?"

Such utter contempt for our Constitution explains why Democrats refuse to support any measure to cite constitutional authority for legislation. For example, the Enumerated Powers Act (HR 1359) would require that "Each Act of Congress shall contain a concise and definite statement of the constitutional authority relied upon for the enactment of each portion of that Act," but for years, insurmountable obstacles have prevented passage of HR 1359 -- and you know who they are.

As for the Slaughter Solution, Article 1 Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution stipulates, "Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, and that in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively."

Typical of Republican protests about this effort to evade the Constitution's prescription for passage of legislation, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) called the ruse "the acme of arrogance" and the "shredding the U.S. Constitution."

Unfortunately, more than a few Republicans have dabbled in such unconstitutional chicanery. Thus, I am reminded of the admonition regarding hypocrisy in Matthew 7:4-5. In contemporary terms, Republicans must first demonstrably abide by First Principles before calling on Democrats to do the same.

The only silver lining to this cloud: If Democrats pass ObamaCare, every medical complaint by a Democrat constituent will be hung around their necks.

Fellow Patriots, stand firm for Essential Liberty for we still hold these Truths.

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Mark AlexanderPublisher, PatriotPost.US