From the Patriot Post Daily Brief

Clinton-appointed District Court Judge Susan Bolton blocked most of Arizona's immigration law this week, ruling that it would "impermissibly burden federal resources." In other words, enforcing federal law is a violation of federal law. The preliminary injunction, she said, would merely preserve the status quo and be less harmful to immigrants than allowing the law to be enforced in full. The next step for Arizona is an appeal before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where Bolton said that the Justice Department's suit was "likely to succeed on the merits."

Bolton blocked the primary provisions of the law -- including those requiring state law enforcement officials to check immigration status when other legitimate contact occurs, as well as the requirement that foreigners carry their papers at all times (federal law already requires this). On the other hand, 12 provisions, including some on human smuggling and transporting illegals, were left intact. All told, though, her ruling went even further than the DoJ had hoped.

The Department of Homeland Security is bound by federal law to "respond to an inquiry by a federal, state, or local government agency, seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status ... for any purpose authorized by law, by providing the requested verification or status information." Yet Bolton wrote, "An increase in the number of requests for determinations of immigration ... will divert resources from the federal government's other responsibilities and priorities." Or as National Review put it, "she accepts Justice's implicit argument that it's not the letter of the federal law that matters, but what parts of the law the executive decides to enforce."

National Review concludes:
The bottom line is that Arizona wants to enforce the law against illegal aliens. It wants them to be cognizant of the fact that the state is serious about the law, and therefore to conclude that it's best to leave or not come in the first place. Arizona did not deem these people illegal aliens. The federal government did, in laws passed by Congress and signed by the president of the United States. Arizona thinks those laws mean something. If the Justice Department's suit -- and Judge Bolton's line of argument -- prevails, then we'll know that they don't. The real law of the land will be our current, de facto amnesty, imposed by executive whim.

For the administration, the bottom line isn't the law, but getting voters from the Hispanic bloc. With the help of their Leftmedia minions, they are succeeding.

Meanwhile, America's immigration system remains broken and in desperate need of repair -- preferably by those who value and uphold the Rule of Law.

Part 2 of Mark Alexander's Essay

If we expect to bequeath liberty to our posterity, then we must dedicate our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to uphold the primacy of free enterprise over socialism, to defend Essential Liberty and to restore constitutional Rule of Law.

Be assured, should we fail to rise to the current challenge, the terminus of the Obama Plan is tyranny.

Barackracy, Part 2
Reversing Course and Restoring Liberty

In Part 1 of this essay, "Breaking the Back of Free Enterprise," I noted, "Barack Hussein Obama's macro agenda to accomplish the 'fundamental transformation of America' 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."

I then posited the question, "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. I believe there is still time to implement political solutions to reverse course and restore Essential Liberty, constitutional Rule of Law and its economic expression, free enterprise. But that window is closing.

There is an economic catastrophe on our horizon, (the Obama Plan), one whose full force will likely be felt in the next few years. It will bring with it massive increases in taxation and income redistribution accompanied by inflation of the cost of goods and services and, ultimately, centralization of the economy through complete regulation of every economic sector. This scenario will be modeled after Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies, but it will be so massive as to fully institutionalize Socialism on a national scale.

That's the bad news.

The good news is there exists a solution, short of civil disobedience and revolution, to dispense with the Obama Plan. That solution is a revitalized national movement to restore constitutional integrity. That effort is now well underway bearing the Tea Party label -- not a political party, per se, but the advocacy of a set of principles to restore Rule of Law.

Our success will require a groundswell of action in the next few election cycles, and the seating of a majority of legislators who have both a firm understanding of the principles of Essential Liberty and a willingness to enact the bold and difficult legislation necessary to restore constitutional Rule of Law.

The most important of these legislative measures are outlined in the Patriot Declaration. These include the enumeration of specific constitutional authority for any and every act of the legislature, its compliance with our Constitution's standard for Federalism, the Tenth Amendment, and a complete overhaul of our system of taxation.

In other words, the only way to undermine the Obama Plan is to reduce the size and scope of central government such that it comports once again with the plain language of our Constitution. In fact, this conversion to a government whose powers are, as our Constitution's principal author James Madison declared, "few and defined," will necessarily collapse its size.

However, our Constitution's prescription for central government authority and its proscription against exceeding that authority have been eroded for generations. It will thus take time to restore the Rule of Law, but restoration is the only option if our legacy of liberty is to be extended to future generations.

The alternative is, most certainly, tyranny.

The "Cycle of Democracy," attributed to 18th-century Scottish historian Alexander Tytler, follows this sequence: "From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty [Rule of Law]; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage [rule of men]."

The consequences of complacency and apathy are, indeed, dependency and bondage.

The choice that all Americans face today was aptly described by Ronald Reagan in his timeless challenge to conservatives, "A Time for Choosing": "You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right, There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism."

Now, as then, Leftists decry the Reagan model for restoration, cutting taxes to grow the economy, as "trickle-down economics." But the Reagan Plan resulted in the largest peacetime economic surge in American history.

To be sure, the Democrat-controlled legislature refused to enact the spending cuts Reagan called for, and this led to what were then record deficits. Those deficits, however, pale in comparison to the debt of the Obama Plan, which can only result in "trickle-up poverty."

Alexis de Tocqueville once observed, "Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

Today, the once noble Democrat Party seeks only to forcibly reduce the people they pretend to serve to restraint and servitude.

In 1916, a minister and outspoken advocate for liberty, William J. H. Boetcker, published a pamphlet entitled The Ten Cannots, which fittingly contrasts the competing political and economic factions today: You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they will not do for themselves.

It is a hard, undeniable truth that the federal government cannot give to anybody what it does not first take from somebody else, and the power to do so is ruinous. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, we must "prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them."

Further, the debt and taxation crisis we face today was a prospect of great concern to our Founders at the dawn of our Republic. In Jefferson's words, "Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reenactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free. ... Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands. ... The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression. ... We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. ... I place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared."

In 1824, Jefferson concluded, "I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." What would he say today?

Our Constitution, and Rule of Law it was meant to ensure, has suffered great injury as a result of national complacency and apathy.

So we must once again choose.

Which will it be, freedom or totalitarianism, the Reagan Plan or the Obama Plan?

If we expect to bequeath liberty to our posterity, then we must dedicate our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to uphold the primacy of free enterprise over socialism, to defend Essential Liberty and to restore constitutional Rule of Law.

Will enough conservatives be seated in Congress this election cycle to stop, or even reverse, the Obama agenda? Stopping, at the very least, is mandatory. Reversing, while a daunting challenge, is achievable and must be the sole focus of every Patriot in the coming election cycle.

Be assured, should we fail to rise to the current challenge, the terminus of the Obama Plan is tyranny.

So, fellow Patriots, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, "Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve."

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!

Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post

Sign WND's Petition

The petition reads:

"Whereas, the House of Representatives and Senate of the United States of America reached a new low watermark in 2009 and 2010 in approving legislation in direct contravention of the U.S. Constitution, I, an American citizen eligible to vote in my state, do solemnly pledge the following:

• "Refuse to vote for any congressional candidate, House or Senate, who supported the so-called "health-care reform package" approved in Congress;
• "I will only consider voting for congressional candidates who pledge to overturn the unconstitutional health-care legislation;
• "I will only consider voting for congressional candidates who vow to apply the strict test of constitutionality to all future legislation;
• "I will enthusiastically support with my vote and financial support those congressional candidates who offer an aggressive legislative program for taking America back to its constitutional moorings in self-government and the rule of law."

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.

SEAL 3-Not An Update; An Observation

SEALs Case Shows How Terrorists Use 'Lawfare' to Undermine U.S.
Human Events ^ March 9, 2010 Clare M. Lopez

The use of our democratic system and the rule of law by those whose intent is to destroy our civilization is a cynical tactic that Americans ought to be smart enough to see straight through.

Islamic jihadis are manipulating Western-style legal systems everywhere to their own benefit while we, the founders of those systems, are floundering in a morass of moral relativism, multicultural meaninglessness, and a deplorable amnesia about the genuine worth of our own heritage, traditions, and values.

The current case in point involves the three Navy SEALs who, as members of Seal Team 10, captured the Iraqi terrorist Ahmed Hashim Abed in September 2009. Abed is charged with directing the March 2004 ambush of four Blackwater security guards in the town of Fallujah in which the four were killed, and their bodies mutilated, burned, and hung from a bridge. Unbelievably, the three heroic Navy SEALs are now being court-martialed because Abed claims that at some point in the capture and interrogation process, they treated him a bit roughly; the charges against the SEALs also allege they made false statements about that treatment.

(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...