Archive for the ‘Federalism’ Category
President Obama’s political decision to rescind the federal government’s pact with Arizona is proof positive that President Obama won’t enforce the federal government’s laws. He’s essentially become the first US Scofflaw-in-Chief. Predictably, Arizona law enforcement is reacting to the Scofflaw-in-Chief’s edict. First, here’s what Gov. Brewer said about the Scofflaw-in-Chief’s decision:
“As though we needed any more evidence, President Obama has demonstrated anew his utter disregard for the safety and security of the Arizona people. Within the last two hours, I have been notified the Obama administration has revoked the 287(g) agreement under the authority of which Arizona law enforcement officers have partnered with the federal government in the enforcement of immigration law.
“Of course, it is no coincidence that this announcement comes immediately on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the constitutionality of the heart of Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law: SB 1070. It’s worth noting that 68 law enforcement entities in 24 states have functioning 287(g) agreements with the federal government. But it appears the only agreements eliminated today were those in Arizona, the state that happens to be on the front lines of America’s fight against illegal immigration. We are on our own, apparently.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. The Obama administration has fought the people of Arizona at every turn, downplaying the threat that a porous border poses to our citizens, filing suit in order to block our State from protecting itself, unilaterally granting immunity to tens of thousands of illegal aliens living in our midst, and now this. Still, the disarmament of Arizona’s 287(g) agreements is a new low, even for this administration.
President Obama has exceptionally thin skin. He also isn’t much into enforcing laws that past congresses have passed and previous presidents have signed into law. Today’s decision to undercut Arizona’s ability to protect its people is the greatest abdication of a president’s domestic responsibilities in the past 25 years.
Arizona is Ground Zero of the immigration battle. Their citizens have been tortured, held hostage or murdered outright. Despite those facts, the federal government has turned a blind eye towards Arizona.
Here’s what Rep. Jeff Flake said:
Mesa, Arizona – Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents Arizona’s Sixth District, today criticized the Obama Administration’s suspension of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Immigration and Nationality Act Section 287(g) program in Arizona, which allows local authorities to partner with federal law enforcement agencies to carry out certain immigration enforcement functions. ICE announced today that with the suspension of the 287(g) program, their agents will not respond to a scene in which a person’s immigration status is in question unless that person is a convicted criminal, has been removed from the US previously and reentered unlawfully, or is a recent border crosser.
“Suspending this program will strip our local authorities of critical tools to deal with illegal immigration,” said Flake. “The Obama Administration is effectively broadcasting that unless an illegal immigrant is wanted for a crime, the attention of ICE isn’t warranted.”
President Obama campaigned against President Bush and Bush’s “imperial presidency.” It’s ironic that his administration is selectively, and intermittenly, enforcing the laws on the books. President Obama has become what he campaigned against.
KrisAnne Hall, whom I met at this year’s RightOnline Conference, wrote this brilliant article about Monday’s opinion written by Anthony Kennedy. I found this part particularly compelling:
Not only is this ruling devoid of any appeal to the Constitution, it is very dangerous. It is an aberration of fundamental Constitutional principles and a brazen assault on state sovereignty! Chiefly, Kennedy takes the Supremacy clause of the Constitution, which declares that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and translates that principle into the supremacy of the Federal government over the states. There couldn’t be anything more contrary to our founders’ intent. Let me repeat: this opinion is a monumental assault on the sovereignty of the states.
Article I section 8 clause 4 of the Constitution states that Congress has the power [t]o establish an uniform rule of naturalization. The purpose of the federal government in the case of immigration, as Justice Kennedy appropriately acknowledges is “to be a single voice of the nation for foreign relations.”
This external focus is in line with James Madison’s directive that: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace negotiation, and foreign commerce…”
Justice Kennedy’s ruling allowed President Obama to continue his disastrous, dangerous policies that endanger people. If Justice Kennedy had the final say in the matter, state sovereignty would’ve disappeared midway through his intellectually flimsy opinion.
Tags: President Obama, Illegal Immigration, State Sovereignty, Anthony Kennedy, Supremacy Clause, Constitution, SCOTUS, Law Enforcement, Public Safety
Tom Daschle’s op-ed on the fate of O’Care is carefully crafted spin. Not that that’s surprising from a man with tax avoidance issues. In a sense, that should be expected. Here’s how Sen. Daschle frames the O’Care-SCOTUS debate:
With hearings starting Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to deliver a pivotal decision that will profoundly affect the future of our country. At stake is whether millions of Americans can have greater access to affordable health care coverage or whether the nation’s health care system will be plagued by uncertainty, imbalance and spiraling costs.
The justices are to rule on a critical element of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the now two-year old, groundbreaking health care reform law. They will determine whether Congress has the authority, under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, to mandate that every U.S. citizen must buy health insurance.
This is what happens when politicians stay in DC way too long. They start thinking that the American people can’t think for themselve, that they’re incapable of telling markets what they want.
The real debate isn’t over whether O’Care is the solution to our imagined health insurance crisis. It’s whether the U.S. Constitution gives the federal government the authority to dictate its priorities onto the people it purports to serve.
Let’s cut to the chase. The U.S. Constitution doesn’t give the federal government that authority. Whatever the Supreme Court’s ruling, that’s the reality.
If the Supreme Court rules that O’Care is constitutional, it will have ruled that there’s nothing the federal government can’t force people to do. In the end, I suspect that’s why they’ll rule the individual and employer mandates unconstitutional.
Sen. Daschle couldn’t resist making this phony argument:
The only real question, in fact, is whether we have an individual mandate, one that requires individual responsibility, which I always thought was claimed as a conservative value, or we have a community mandate.
This isn’t a real question. It’s Sen. Daschle’s way of exposing his disdain for the Founding Fathers. The Founding Fathers would’ve cringed at the thought of the federal government getting involved in the most intimate parts of people’s lives.
When the federal government imposes its priorities on the people it’s supposed to represent, it loses legitimacy. The Tenth Amendment says that those things not outlined in the Ninth Amendment belong to “the states or the people.” President Obama and Sen. Daschle apparently don’t like that part of the Bill of Rights. Apparently, they’re willing to willfully ignore parts of the Constitution and its amendments.
That’s known as tyranny, which must be stopped ASAP.
Sen. Dashle implies that O’Care will fix all that ails the U.S. health insurance industry. It does nothing of the sort. It makes things worse by telling insurance companies what types of coverage must be included in insurance policies.
Here’s a glimpse at a total fabrication:
Congress was well aware of the experience of these states and knew that the insurance market reforms at the heart of improving coverage under this new act are inextricably linked to a mandate that requires all of us to take responsibility for our health.
If “Congress was well aware” that required a mandate to fix the health insurance industry, why did then-candidate Obama oppose individual and employer mandates?
The truth is that Sen. Daschle is spinning like a top. There isn’t a morsel of truth in his op-ed.
Tags: SCOTUS, Obamacare, Mandates, Tyranny, Tom Daschle, Democrats, Founding Fathers, Tenth Amendment, Constitution
It isn’t a secret that Mitt Romney has an individual mandate crisis with health care. Now it appears as though he’s got a Tenth Amendment problem, too.
Romney is now attempting to defend the indefensible:
Requiring people to have health insurance is “conservative,” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney told MSNBC on Wednesday, but only if states do it.
The argument aims to improve Romney’s appeal to Republican voters concerned about the healthcare reform plan he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts in 2006. The Massachusetts law contains an individual mandate similar to the one in President Obama’s healthcare law, which conservatives despise.
“Personal responsibility,” Romney said, “is more conservative in my view than something being given out for free by government.”
“There were two options in my state,” he said. “One was to continue to allow people without insurance to go to the hospital and get free care, paid for by the government, paid for by taxpayers.”
“The best idea is to let each state craft their own solution because that’s, after all, the heart of conservatism: to follow the Constitution,” he said.
Mitt’s difficulties result from his selective reading of the Tenth Amendment. Here’s the language of the Tenth Amendment:
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.
I’d love hearing Gov. Romney’s justification for the state determining what’s best for families as opposed to families deciding what’s best for families.
Is Gov. Romney willing to argue that government-imposed responsibilities on families are preferable to families crafting their own solutions? Doesn’t that sound like Mitt thinks that government knows best?
Certainly, the Founding Fathers thought that the “government that governs least governs best.” Families, not cities, states or the feds, should be the governance of first resort.
It’s apparent that Mitt’s a convenient conservative when it fits his needs. It’s equally apparent that Mitt’s comfortable with government dictating to families what they must do.
That isn’t conservative. That’s liberalism at its worst.
Technorati: Tenth Amendment, Constitution, States Rights, Big Government, Romneycare, Mitt Romney, Madates, Liberalism, Families, Health Care, Personal Responsibility, Conservatism
David Rivkin and Lee Casey wrote this must-read op-ed that gives a detailed history of the health care lawsuit in its path to the Supreme Court. Erwin Chemerinsky’s op-ed, unfortunately, is predictable but typically liberal thinking.
Here’s part of Rivkin’s and Casey’s op-ed:
The Constitution limits federal power by granting Congress authority in certain defined areas, such as the regulation of interstate and foreign commerce. Those powers not specifically vested in the federal government by the Constitution or, as stated in the 10th Amendment, “prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The court will now determine whether those words still have meaning.
As we argued two years ago in these pages, the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (aka ObamaCare) is unconstitutional. First and foremost, the law requires virtually every American to have health insurance. Congress purported to impose this unprecedented “individual mandate” pursuant to its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, but the requirement is not limited to those who engage in any particular commercial or economic activity (or any activity at all). Rather, the mandate applies to everyone lawfully present in the United States who does not fall within one of the law’s narrow exclusions.
Under our Constitution’s system of dual sovereignty, only states have the authority to impose health and safety regulations on individuals simply because they are present. The Supreme Court has ruled many times that the Constitution denies to the federal government this type of “general police power.” Federal legislation must be grounded in one of the “enumerated” powers the Constitution grants to Congress—such as the power to regulate interstate commerce. Although the Supreme Court has interpreted that power broadly (especially since the 1940s), it has consistently held that the Commerce Clause has limits.
Rivkin and Casey are basing their arguments on what the Constitution says. They clearly understand the thinking of the Founding Fathers. If they didn’t, they couldn’t have grasped the concept of dual sovereignty. That’s a clear distinction from Prof. Chemerinsky’s op-ed:
Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare reform package passed in 2010. Under current constitutional law, this should be an easy case to predict, the law is clearly constitutional. But what complicates the decision and makes the result unpredictable is whether the justices will see the issue in terms of precedent or through the partisanship that has so dominated the public debate and most of the court decisions so far.
The primary issue before the Supreme Court is whether Congress’ power to regulate commerce among the states gives it the authority to require that individuals either purchase health insurance or pay a penalty. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that under the commerce clause, Congress may regulate economic activity that, taken cumulatively across the country, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce.
Prof. Chemerinsky’s argument essentially is that precedent, not the clearly written text of the Constitution, should determine the outcome. That’s a well-established legal tactic. It’s also wrong. When precedents don’t reflect the content of the Constitution, those precedents must be struck down. The Constitution, not 5 justices with a political preference, should determine whether something’s constitutional.
Here’s another argument from Prof. Chemerinsky:
Thus, under current law, there are two questions: First, is Congress regulating economic activity? Second, if so, looked at in the aggregate, is there a substantial effect on interstate commerce?
The answer to the first question is no, Congress wasn’t regulating economic activity. They were imposing their will without the consent of the governed. The Supreme Court has given wide latitude to cases involving the Interstate Commerce Clause in the past. That’s led to this moment.
Had the justices not bought into clever lawyerly arguments but instead stuck with the Constitution, the long list of precedents that Prof. Chemerinsky now cites wouldn’t exist.
Prof. Chemerinsky argues that politics will determine the Supreme Court’s final ruling. That argument is flimsy at best. The reality is that Prof. Chemerinsky doesn’t like the fact that the ruling will be based on the Constitution, not on precedent.
It’s time to start scrapping precedents when they conflict with the Constitution. It’s time to put limits on the things that the federal government is allowed to do.
Technorati: David Rivkin, Lee Casey, Obamacare, Constitution, Federalism, Dual Sovereignty, Supreme Court, Erwin Chemerinsky, Precedent, Interstate Commerce Clause, Congress
From the candidates’ introductions, Newt Gingrich owned Tuesday night’s debate. Here’s what Speaker Gingrich said in his introduction:
FORMER REP. NEWT GINGRICH (R-GA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I’m Newt Gingrich. And unlike President Obama, I’m glad to be in Las Vegas. I think it’s a great place to have a convention.(APPLAUSE)
And, and when I am president, we’re going to replace class warfare with cooperation so all Americans can get off food stamps and onto paychecks.
Everyone on stage and in the auditorium got a hearty laugh from Newt’s calling Vegas “a great place to have a convention.” It’s a stark contrast with President Obama’s ill-advised statements about people blowing their paychecks in Vegas.
That was hardly the only winning line for Speaker Gingrich.
Mitt suffered his first difficult night last night. He got rattled when Gov. Perry went after him on his hiring a lawn maintenance company that employed an illegal immigrant:
PERRY: You stood here in front of the American people and did not tell the truth that you had illegals working on your property. And the newspaper came to you and brought it to your attention, and you still, a year later, had those individuals working for you.
The idea that you can sit here and talk about any of us having an immigration issue is beyond me. I’ve got a strong policy. I’ve always been against amnesty. You, on the other hand, were for amnesty.
COOPER: I’ve got 30 seconds, then we’ve got move on to another immigration question.
ROMNEY: OK.
You wrote an op-ed in the newspaper saying you were open to amnesty. That’s number one.
Number two, we hired a lawn company to mow our lawn, and they had illegal immigrants that were working there. And when that was pointed out to us, we let them go. And we went to them and said –
PERRY: A year later?
ROMNEY: You have a problem with allowing someone to finish speaking. And I suggest that if you want to become president of the United States, you have got to let both people speak. So first, let me speak.
(APPLAUSE)
ROMNEY: So we went to the company and we said, look, you can’t have any illegals working on our property. I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals. It turns out that once question, they hired someone who had falsified their documents, had documents, and therefore we fired them. And let me tell you, it is hard in this country as an individual homeowner to know if people who are contractors working at your home, if they have hired people that are illegal. If I’m president, we’ll put in an E-Verify system, which you have opposed –
“I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals”? That’s a totally pathetic response. Like it’d be ok to have illegal immigrants working for him if Mitt wasn’t running for president? That’s what it came off like.
BTW, that isn’t the only difficulty Mitt has with illegal immigration:
“There were six sanctuary cities, he did nothing about them,” Giuliani said. “There was even a sanctuary mansion. At his own home, illegal immigrants were being employed, not being turned in to anybody or by anyone, and then when he deputized the police, he did it two weeks before he was going to leave office, and they never seemed to even catch the illegal immigrants who were working at his mansion. So I would say he had sanctuary mansion, not just sanctuary city.”
It’s one thing to have an illegal immigrant on the lawn maintenance crew. It’s quite another to know about sanctuary cities while you’re governor, then doing nothing to fix the problem.
It’s worth noting that Mitt looked petty while arguing about immigration.
The other time Mitt looked vulnerable was when Sen. Santorum caught him on health care:
ROMNEY: And — look — look, we’ll let everybody take a look at the fact checks. I was interviewed by Dan Balz. I was in interviews in this debate stage with you four years ago. I was asked about the Massachusetts plan, was it something I’d impose on the nation? And the answer is absolutely not.
It was something crafted for a state. And I’ve said time and again, Obamacare is bad news. It’s unconstitutional. It costs way too much money, a trillion dollars. And if I’m president of the United States, I will repeal it for the American people.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: All right. Senator Santorum?
SANTORUM: Mitt, the governor of Massachusetts just is coming forward saying we have to pick up the job left undone by Romneycare, which is doing something about cutting health care costs.
What you did is exactly what Barack Obama did: focused on the wrong problem. Herman always says you’ve got to find the right problem. Well, the right problem is health care costs. What you did with a top-down, government-run program was focus on the problem of health care access. You expanded the pool of insurance without controlling costs. You’ve blown a hole in the budget up there. And you authored in Obamacare, which is going to blow a hole in the budget of this country.
COOPER: Governor Romney, I’m going to give you 30 seconds.
ROMNEY: I’m — I’m sorry, Rick, that you find so much to dislike in my plan, but I’ll tell you, the people in Massachusetts like it by about a 3-1 margin.
And we dealt with a challenge that we had, a lot of people that were expecting government to pay their way. And we said, you know what? If people have the capacity to care for themselves and pay their own way, they should.
Now, I can tell you this, it’s absolutely right that there’s a lot that needs to be done. And I didn’t get the job done in Massachusetts in getting the health care costs down in this country. It’s something I think we have got to do at the national level. I intend to do that.
Again, that last sentence will kill Mitt. I’m betting that most people in the United States want nothing to do with a national health care plan. They hate the one that’s already in place. Apparently Mitt thinks people would prefer his national health care disaster over President Obama’s national health care disaster.
The other part of that exchange that’ll sting is where Sen. Santorum said Romneycare increased access but didn’t affect rising health care costs. I’m betting that the overwhelming majority of Americans want affordable health care more than they’re worried about access to health insurance.
Speaker Gingrich’s criticism of the Supercommittee got the biggest applause of the night:
GINGRICH: I mean, if you want to understand how totally broken Washington is, look at this entire model of the super committee, which has now got a magic number to achieve. And if it doesn’t achieve the magic number, then we’ll all have to shoot ourselves in the head so that when they come back with a really dumb idea to merely cut off our right leg, we’ll all be grateful that they’re only semi-stupid instead of being totally stupid.
(APPLAUSE)
GINGRICH: Now, the idea that you have a bunch of historically illiterate politicians who have no sophistication about national security trying to make a numerical decision about the size of the defense budget tells you everything you need to know about the bankruptcy of the current elite in this country in both parties. The fact is, we ought to first figure out what threaten us, we ought to figure out what strategies will respond to that. We should figure out what structures we need for those strategies. We should then cost them.
I helped found the Military Reform Caucus. I’m a hawk, but I’m a cheap hawk. But the fact is, to say I’m going to put the security of the United States up against some arbitrary budget number is suicidally stupid.
The supercommittee is disastrous policy. The minute Republicans take control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, they should void the debt ceiling deal. Then they should get serious about cutting discretionary spending while reforming entitlements.
If Newt’s the president, there’s no doubt but that he’ll balance the budget, get the economy roaring again, cut spending and reform entitlements. That’s a series of major tasks. Still, it’s what Newt’s done his entire political career.
To me, the winner of last night’s debate was Newt, followed by Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, with Mitt having a disastrous night.
UPDATE: Ed’s analysis of how Mitt responded to the immigration issue is spot on:
Romney got rattled on stage, and everyone knew it. He lost his temper, raised his voice, and looked decidedly uncool in his efforts to push back on immigration, a topic which Romney used in earlier debates as a club against Perry.
He later said this:
This is the first debate Romney unquestionably lost. Perry won to an extent by exceeding expectations and staying in the fight the entire debate, but was it a breakout performance? Doubtful, although it might be enough to get a few of his supporters back in the fold and regain a little momentum. But the real winner might be Newt Gingrich, who despite having one bad moment with Romney on the health-care mandate once again came out looking positive, well-informed, and fit for battle.
I heartily agree with Ed’s observations.
Technorati: Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Romneycare, Immigration, Supercommittee, GOP, Election 2012
NYTimes editor Bill Keller’s editorial isn’t disappointing. It’s what I expect from a NY elitist who couldn’t find America’s political mainstream with a GPS and an unlimited supply of gas for his car.
First, he throws in a quote from another clueless GOP operative:
“Ronald Reagan couldn’t get past first base in today’s environment,” said one Texas Republican operative who has turned despondent about the party’s drift.
Remember Ed Rollins saying that Reaganite conservatism was dead in 2008? In 2010, alot of Reagan admirers helped produce the biggest midterm landslide since Reagan was a young aspiring actor. Reaganite conservatism won’t die because it’s anchored in liberty, personal responsibility and accountability.
Aren’t those are the principles that are the cornerstones of the TEA Party movement?
Then Mr. Keller attacks the ‘Not Romney candidate’:
Perry brings to the campaign, besides great posture and polished good looks, an economic record that looks like a vindication of Tea Party dogma, never mind that it was made possible by a quarter of America’s known oil reserves, a lot of low-wage immigrants, a reluctance to waste government money on frills like education and health care, and a tax and regulatory environment out of the Wild West.
On paper, and, for all I know, in his heart, Perry is the most ardent of Tea Party ideologues. His book, “Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington,” is a manifesto of 10th Amendment hyperfederalism and radical individualism, assailing the constitutional basis of Social Security, the income tax, the Federal Reserve, consumer protection, and “federal laws regulating the environment, regulating guns, protecting civil rights, establishing the massive programs and Medicare and Medicaid, creating national minimum wage laws, establishing national labor laws,” and so on.
Now there’s a movement. A “10th Amendment hyperfederalism and radical individualism.” Sounds ferocious, doesn’t it? Being particularly steadfast on 10th Amendment issues isn’t a vice; it’s a virtue. Except in Mr. Keller’s mind. Then it’s a dangerous form of radicalism.
Similarly, radical individualism isn’t radical except with collectivists like Mr. Keller and adherents from the upper east side of Manhattan.
The title of Mr. Keller’s op-ed is “Is the Tea Party Over?” The short answer is exceptionally short: No. The slightly abridged version is a bit longer: Only a liberal elitist would think the TEA Party’s enthusiasm is shrinking.
Mr. Keller thinks that not having settled on a candidate already is a sign that the TEA Party is diminishing. It doesn’t prove that at all. It’s proof that TEA Party activists are being wise presidential shoppers. They aren’t buying the first conservative-sounding schtick they hear.
They’re intent on not settling for I-checked-all-the-right-boxes candidate. They’re intent on getting the real deal, the person who best fits the most TEA Party attributes. That necessarily includes fighting for the TEA Party’s principles. (There’s that hyperfederalist thing again.)
Rather than sounding like a movement who’s losing its intensity, it sounds more like a movement that’s matured, stayed steadfast to constitutional principles while making sound real-world decisions.
The day after Election Day, 2012, I’ll probably write a post asking Mr. Keller if he thinks the TEA Party is dead. I’m confident he won’t think, much to his chagrin, the TEA Party is dead. He’ll only wish it was.
BTW, a great gauge of whether TEA Party principles are waning is counting how many people utter the sentence “I wish the election was tomorrow” or a variant thereof.
Technorati: New York Times, Bill Keller, Editorial, Elitism, Manhattan, Liberalism, TEA Party, Tenth Amendment, Accountability, Individualism, Republicans, Election 2012
You’ve got to applaud Gov. Perry’s stand against the federal government’s intrusion into Texas schools:
When Secretary of Education Arne Duncan jabbed Perry on public schools in mid-August, it was only the latest skirmish between the governor and the Obama administration since late 2009, when Perry announced that the state would not sign onto common core-curriculum standards. Those criteria, though endorsed by the Obama administration, were developed by a consortium of 48 states and the National Governors Association.The announcement was quickly followed by news that Texas would not participate in the administration’s signature education program, a competition among states for $4.35 billion in grants, because of its emphasis on the adoption of the common curriculum. Texas public schools were eligible for $700 million through the grants.
“I am not prepared to sell control of our state’s education system for any price,” Perry said in January 2010. The common curriculum, he said, could lead to the “dumbing down” of the state’s standards.
Perry’s disdain for the federal government’s role in public education, along with legal challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency and the federal heath care overhaul, fit neatly into his anti-Washington primary campaign against U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who challenged him for the 2010 Republican nomination for governor. It can now also be seen as a preamble to his presidential run.
If anything’s becoming clear, it’s that Gov. Perry isn’t President Bush with regard to expanding the reach of the federal government.
A number of the principles in NCLB were admirable. There’s no denying that accountability in education is important. Nonetheless, the strings attached to NCLB have earned NCLB poor grades on a bipartisan basis.
There’s little argument amongst serious constitutional scholars that this administration has tried to expand the federal government’s influence at the state, local and personal level far beyond the limits of the U.S. Constitution and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
I applaud Gov. Perry for saying no to the federal government’s curriculum. Further, I applaud him for implicitly saying that his state education department will do a better job of developing curriculum than the federal government has done.
I’d look forward to seeing the federal government’s influence into state, local and personal decisions shrink during the next Republican presidential administration. With President Obama’s job approval rating shrinking each week, the next Republican administration is less than 500 days away.
Technorati: Rick Perry, Tenth Amendment, Federalism, Education, NCLB, TEA Party, Republicans, President Obama, Arne Duncan, EPA, Democrats, Election 2012
Since affirming that he’s running for president, Mitt Romney has admitted that he’s a manmade global warming hoax believer:
Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney broke with Republican orthodoxy on Friday by saying he believes that humans are responsible, at least to some extent, for climate change.
“I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that,” he told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire.
“It’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.”…
In addressing climate change and energy policy, Romney called on the United States to break its dependence on foreign oil, and expand alternative energies including solar, wind, nuclear and clean coal.
This morning, I wrote on Twitter that Mitt’s buying into the manmade global warming hoax was his attempt to lock down that all-important Lindsey Graham vote in the South Carolina primary. This afternoon, I received a PAC’s fundraising letter:
Some politicians will say and do anything to feel popular. That need to fit in has created an incestuous relationship between Republicans and Democrats that has prevented the implementation of commonsense policies. To actually implement our shared conservative vision, we must first address the politicians in the party that claims to represent us: the Republican Party.
Lindsey Graham continually undermines conservative efforts on a wide range of issues, from immigration to the debt ceiling. He is the quintessential big-government Republican, committed to maintaining the power of the central government that he helps control. This time, we have had enough. We are going to send a shot across Lindsey‘s bow by running a media campaign in his home state of South Carolina. This will not only serve to pressure Graham to at least pretend to be a conservative, but will also send a message to all big-government Republicans (are you listening Scott Brown?) that we will no longer support the politicians who betray us!
Mitt Romney is the worst kind of politician. He has absolutely no foundation based on principle. He tailors his message based on what is politically expedient. After we announced the launch of our Stop Romney campaign, a handful of people have argued: ?but he is the only person who can beat Obama. This is the narrative that the liberal media has been pushing. Night after night, in the old-media complex, pundits claim that independent voters will only respond to a pandering ?moderate like Mitt Romney.
First, I want to make it perfectly clear that I want to see Scott Brown re-elected in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, Scott Brown is as conservative a person as can get elected with an R behind his name. It’s also worth noting that Scott Brown hasn’t tried pretending that he was as conservative as Jim Demint.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s focus on Mitt’s faults. In terms of personal character traits, Mitt’s flip-flops are disastrous in a TEA Party world. People are demanding honesty and character in their elected officials. Mitt isn’t devoid of those traits but he doesn’t have an overabundance of those traits, either.
Entering the presidential sweepstakes, Mitt’s attachment to the father of Obamacare was seen as his biggest difficulty in winning the Republican nomination. Now that he’s sided with Lindsey Graham on MMGW, that’s running a very, very close second.
Why would TEA Party conservatives and clear-thinking independents vote for Mitt, knowing that he’s gone off the reservation on two issues of great importance to Republicans?
I’ve said before what I’ll repeat now: Mitt is the quintessential CEO, changing his packaging and presentation to fit his needs. That isn’t what a principled TEA Party conservative does. That means Mitt isn’t a TEA Party conservative who’ll never earn the votes of TEA Party conservatives. If he’s the nominee, expect TEA Party activists to abandon the Republican Party in droves.
Let’s ask some other questions, starting with whether I’d trust him picking Supreme Court justices. I wouldn’t because Mitt isn’t a federalist or a constitutionalist. Period. Would I trust Mitt to limit the authority of the EPA or the FCC? Based on what I’m seeing, I wouldn’t.
This election isn’t just about creating jobs, as Mitt wants us to believe. It’s about limiting government’s reach, governing according to principles that the Founding Fathers put at the heart of the founding documents and finally sealing the U.S./Mexican border.
I can’t say I’d be confident Mitt wouldn’t sell us out on each of those things.
I still haven’t picked a candidate that I’m supporting. In fact, I don’t think it’d be wise to do that for at least 4-6 months. That said, I’m announcing that I won’t take Mitt seriously because he isn’t principled and I can’t be certain he wouldn’t undercut the TEA Party/conservative movement a minute after his inauguration.
I won’t support politicians that I don’t trust, even if they get Lindsey Graham’s approval.
Technorati: Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, MMGW, Romneycare, RINOs, Federalism, TEA Party, Conservatism, Election 2012
It’s pretty widely accepted that Mitt Romney’s presidential ambitions are tied directly to his health care plan. That’s why it’s imperative he find a plausible defense for the plan. Based on this article, he hasn’t found it yet:
Despite the similarities between the two, chief among them the coverage requirement that provides for those without insurance to be fined, Romney has been trying to distance his plan from ObamaCare as he mulls a likely second White House bid on the Republican ticket.
He maintains that his plan was successful in Massachusetts but should not be applied at the national level, criticizing the president’s plan for being an unconstitutional infringement on states’ rights.
I can’t argue that Obamacare is “an unconstitutional infringement on states’ rights.” That isn’t the only unconstitutional provision in O’Care, though. Like O’Care, RomneyCare imposes an individual mandate on people, too. That’s likely to be the bigger burden on a Romney candidacy than the states rights issue.
To be fair, they’re both legitimate issues. The sad part is that RomneyCare violates both major constitutional issues if done on a national level.
There are 2 bigger points to be taken from this: 1) that Gov. Romney isn’t a constitutional conservative and 2) he won’t have the TEA Party’s support for the general election.
A Romney ticket would be doomed for a landslide defeat. Without TEA Party support, a GOP candidate’s support would likely look like John McCain’s support: small and less than enthusiastic.
They’d work hard for House and Senate candidates but they’d sit on their hands when it comes time for Gov. Romney because the majority of TEA Party activists are looking for candidates who eat, sleep and breathe the Constitution.
That description doesn’t fit Mitt.
If Gov. Romney is the GOP nominee, it’ll be an electoral disaster for Republicans. It’d mean needlessly missing a great opportunity at defeating President Obama.
This is too important an election to pick someone like Gov. Romney. First, we’ll need the TEA Party energized to win. If they aren’t energized, we can’t win. PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION. Second, Romney is a target-rich environment. His vulnerabilities are too plentiful. Third, Gov. Romney’s time has passed. His message doesn’t resonate like it might have in 2008. The landscape has changed that dramatically.
Technorati: Mitt Romney, RomneyCare, Tenth Amendment, Individual Mandate, Republicans, TEA Party, Constitution, Obamacare, Democrats, Landslide, Election 2012
This morning, when I read this LTE in the Duluth News Tribune, I was astonished at this gentleman’s inability to recognize liberties that we’ve lost during the last 4 years. Here’s what got my blood boiling:
At age 20 I was drafted during the Korean conflict. I spent nearly two years overseas, compensated with the GI Bill, which allowed me to finish college at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Now well into my retirement years, I live a comfortable life with the help of Social Security and Medicare. I am free to express my political views and free to travel anywhere in our 50 states without checking in with police at the borders to verify my identity and to provide details of my travel plans.
This gentleman must not have flown recently. Otherwise, he’d have noticed that the TSA will object if you try travelling “without checking in with the police.” While the TSA aren’t technically police, they’re certainly part of this nation’s ‘security infrastructure’.
This gentleman also says that he’s “free to express [his] political views” in these United States. Obviously, he hasn’t heard about the TSA’s confiscating the pilot’s airline-issued handgun because he exposed the TSA’s ineptitude in terms of airport security:
An airline pilot is being disciplined by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for posting video on YouTube pointing out what he believes are serious flaws in airport security.
The 50-year-old pilot, who lives outside Sacramento, asked that neither he nor his airline be identified. He has worked for the airline for more than a decade and was deputized by the TSA to carry a gun in the cockpit.
He is also a helicopter test pilot in the Army Reserve and flew missions for the United Nations in Macedonia.
Three days after he posted a series of six video clips recorded with a cell phone camera at San Francisco International Airport, four federal air marshals and two sheriff’s deputies arrived at his house to confiscate his federally-issued firearm. The pilot recorded that event as well and provided all the video to News10.
At the same time as the federal marshals took the pilot’s gun, a deputy sheriff asked him to surrender his state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon.
Does that sound like this pilot enjoys the ability to say what he thinks whenever he wants to? It’d be a stretch to say that that sounds like Soviet-style oppression but it certainly sounds like another freedom diminished.
When Obamacare passed, which of our liberties were lost? Just off the top of my head, I’d argue that being told that we either a) had to buy health insurance, b) pay a fine for not buying health insurance or c) getting put in jail for not buying health insurance or paying the fine for not buying insurance is a rather significant loss of freedom.
That’s before talking about all the coverage mandates required of insurance companies to comply with Obamacare’s minimum requirements. That’s before considering the freedom the states lost in being able to put together real health care reform.
Adding piles of debt aren’t liberating either. They’ll either cost us in terms of inflation or higher taxes. Let’s remember that almost $3,000,000,000,000 of debt has been added in the last 2 years, with only 3 GOP votes on a portion of that debt.
Perhaps this gentleman should take off the partisan blinders and deal with reality. Then again, I wouldn’t blame him if he thought today’s reality is just too scary. The good news is that help is on the way, thanks to the TEA Party rallying the people and creating significant conservative majorities in the Minnesota legislature and the U.S. House.
Technorati: TEA Parties, Liberties, First Amendment, TSA, Obamacare, Mandates, Conceal Carry, Permits, Soviets, Confiscation